Staff Platform Engineer

HonorVet Technologies; Kirkland (WA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

HonorVet Technologies seeks a Staff Platform Engineer to own the strategy and execution of enterprise developer platforms, including GitLab and Artifactory supporting 3,000+ users. You will guide cloud-native transformations and establish technical direction for platform engineering.

You will mentor teams, drive multi-region HA deployments, and shape standards for observability, security, and automation across the mission-critical stack.

Qualifications

• BS in computer science or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years operating and architecting enterprise-scale platforms.
• 5+ years of self-managed GitLab experience, including Geo, high availability, and disaster recovery.
• 5+ years of Artifactory experience, including Hub/Edge, federation, and enterprise deployments.
• 3+ years of deep Kubernetes experience, including operators, CRDs, service mesh, and multi-cluster environments.
• 7+ years of expert Linux experience, including kernel, networking, and performance tuning.
• PostgreSQL high availability experience, such as Patroni, and advanced networking knowledge, including BGP, anycast, and zero-trust architectures

Responsibilities

• Own operational strategy and technical direction for GitLab and Artifactory platforms.
• Lead cloud-native transformations, Kubernetes migrations, and GitOps adoption.
• Drive architecture for multi-region high-availability deployments and active-active patterns.
• Design self-healing systems with automated remediation and chaos engineering practices.
• Establish cloud-native best practices, including 12-factor apps, containerization, and observability.
• Mentor team members on automation patterns and cloud-native architectures.
• Influence organizational standards for platform engineering and developer experience.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted operations, eBPF, and service mesh.
• Define and track SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs with a continuous improvement focus.

Skills

GitLab

Artifactory

Kubernetes

Linux

PostgreSQL HA

Networking

Cloud Platforms

Python

Go

Terraform

ArgoCD

Istio

Prometheus

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

Tools

ArgoCD

Flux

Terraform

Istio

Prometheus

Docker

Job description

HonorVet Technologies is a Service Disable Veteran-Owned IT staffing firm, ISO 9001, and ISO 27001 certified, working with federal agencies, state governments, and Fortune 500 enterprise clients across the US. What makes us different isn't a tagline; it's the way we work. We don't forward resumes and hope for the best. We take the time to understand where a professional like you are headed and only reach out when we genuinely believe there's a fit worth exploring. I came across your profile, and something stood out.

Job Title

Staff Platform Engineer

Location

Flexible (Hybrid) - 2-3 days in the office at San Diego, CA or Kirkland, WA office.

Duration

12 months

Overview

This Staff Systems Engineer role owns strategy and execution for client's critical developer platforms, including enterprise GitLab supporting 3,000+ users and JFrog Artifactory. The role leads cloud-native transformation, mentors team members, and establishes technical direction for platform engineering.

What You Will Do

• Own operational strategy and technical direction for GitLab and Artifactory platforms
• Lead cloud-native transformations, Kubernetes migrations, and GitOps adoption
• Drive architecture for multi-region high-availability deployments and active-active patterns
• Design self-healing systems with automated remediation and chaos engineering practices
• Establish cloud-native best practices, including 12-factor apps, containerization, and observability
• Mentor team members on automation patterns and cloud-native architectures
• Influence organizational standards for platform engineering and developer experience
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted operations, eBPF, and service mesh
• Define and track SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs with a continuous improvement focus

Skills: Required

• BS in computer science or equivalent experience
• 7+ years operating and architecting enterprise-scale platforms
• 5+ years of self-managed GitLab experience, including Geo, high availability, and disaster recovery
• 5+ years of Artifactory experience, including Hub/Edge, federation, and enterprise deployments
• 3+ years of deep Kubernetes experience, including operators, CRDs, service mesh, and multi-cluster environments
• 7+ years of expert Linux experience, including kernel, networking, and performance tuning
• PostgreSQL high availability experience, such as Patroni, and advanced networking knowledge, including BGP, anycast, and zero-trust architectures

Cloud-Native Expertise

• Deep knowledge of cloud computing, infrastructure, and architecture patterns
• Experience with major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and GCP, and their managed services
• Experience with cloud-native tooling, including Kubernetes operators, Helm, ArgoCD, and Flux
• Experience with service mesh technologies, including Istio, and infrastructure-as-code tools, including Terraform
• Experience with cloud-native observability, including Prometheus, and distributed tracing
• Experience with cloud-native security, including OPA, Trivy, and SBOM practices
• Production-grade automation experience with Python, Go, and Bash
• CI/CD platform design experience at scale
• Experience with FedRAMP IL4/IL5
• Proven mentorship and team development experience
• Strong communication and cross-team influence skills
• Growth mindset, humility, and commitment to continuous development

Preferred

• Open-source contributions to Kubernetes, GitLab, or Artifactory projects
• Experience with eBPF observability/security, WebAssembly, or MLOps
• Published technical writing or conference talks
• Developer platform or platform-as-a-service experience
• SRE practices and chaos engineering experience.