VP, Container Engineering

Jobtailor; North Carolina; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a senior leader to head the Containers team in the Cloud Center of Excellence for LPL’s container platform, primarily Amazon EKS, across a multi-account landing zone. You will own strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations, champion cost efficiency with FinOps, and drive reliability and SRE practices.

You will enable self-service for application teams via Terraform/Helm modules and Backstage-like developer platform, collaborate across networks, security,

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive technical experience including 5+ years in cloud infrastructure or platform engineering leadership.
• 5+ years of hands-on production AWS at scale in a multi-account landing zone, with 4+ years of authoring production Terraform in a private module ecosystem delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions.
• 1+ year experience as a direct people manager or technical team lead of engineering teams of 5+ engineers.
• 5+ years experience leading and personally participating in 24x7 production on-call rotations in a fast-paced, security-conscious, regulated environment (financial services strongly preferred).
• 4+ years of operating Amazon EKS at scale in production (multi-cluster, multi-account, regular controlled upgrades) with Terraform and Helm, in active partnership with a FinOps function.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Containers team in CCOE: own the strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations of the container platform (Amazon EKS) across the multi-account landing zone.
• Set the multi-year container strategy: cluster topology, multi-tenancy, upgrade cadence, add-ons, ingress, service mesh, GitOps, and CI/CD integration.
• Partner with FinOps to drive container cost efficiency: Karpenter, Spot, right-sizing, namespace chargeback, and platform-level guardrails.
• Drive platform stability and SRE practices: SLOs, golden signals, error budgets, capacity planning, controlled upgrades, blast-radius reduction.
• Deliver a self-service container experience for application teams: Terraform/Helm modules, golden paths, scaffolding, RBAC automation, and Backstage-like integration.
• Co-own landing zone integration with other pods and pods across Foundations (IRSA, network policy, image signing, runtime defense).
• Lead evaluation of additional runtimes (ECS, OpenShift) for cost and simplicity.
• Embed AI capabilities into engineering practice and platform workflows.
• Recruit, mentor, and retain a globally distributed team; manage performance and career development.
• Participate in Agile ceremonies and communicate risk/trade-offs to executives.

Skills

Cloud infrastructure leadership

Team leadership

24x7 on-call management

Cost efficiency strategies

Container strategy

Terraform development

CI/CD integration

GitOps

SRE practices

Capacity planning

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Amazon EKS

Terraform Cloud

GitHub Actions

Karpenter

Kubecost

ArgoCD

Flux

Helm

OpenShift

Job description

• Lead the Containers team in CCOE: own the strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations of LPL's container platform - primarily Amazon EKS - across the multi-account landing zone


• Set the multi-year container strategy: cluster topology, multi-tenancy, upgrade cadence, supported add-ons, ingress, service mesh (where applicable), GitOps (ArgoCD/Flux), and CI/CD integration


• Partner closely with the FinOps pod (within Foundations) to drive container cost efficiency: Karpenter, Spot, right-sizing, namespace chargeback, Kubecost or equivalent, cost-anomaly detection, and platform-level FinOps guardrails


• Drive platform stability, reliability, and SRE practices: SLOs, golden signals, error budgets, capacity planning, controlled upgrades, and blast-radius reduction


• Deliver a self-service container experience for application teams: opinionated Terraform/Helm modules, golden paths, scaffolding, namespace vending, RBAC automation, and Internal Developer Platform (Backstage-class) integration


• Co-own multi-account landing zone integration for containers in partnership with the Network Engineering, Security & Governance, FinOps, and Functional Design Engineering & Strategy pods within Foundations (IRSA, Pod Identity, network policy, Network Firewall integration, image signing, runtime defense)


• Lead the evaluation, design, and (if approved) operationalization of additional workload runtimes: ECS as a workload-migration target for cost and operational simplicity, and potential support for OpenShift on-premises as a hybrid runtime


• Embed agentic AI capabilities into the team's engineering practice (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Bedrock, MCP servers, agentic IaC and review workflows) and into the platform's self-service experience for internal customers


• Embed agentic AI capabilities into the container platform and developer workflow: AI-assisted manifest generation, automated upgrade impact analysis, copilots for cluster operators, and MCP-backed agents for self-service


• Recruit, develop, mentor, and retain a globally distributed team of senior cloud engineers across LPL's US offices and India Global Capability Center (GCC)


• Own all people-management responsibilities for the pod including hiring, onboarding, weekly 1:1s, performance management, compensation planning, career development, and certification-path execution per the CCOE certification matrix


• Operate as a player-coach: spend meaningful time hands-on in Terraform code, design reviews, peer reviews, and incident response while leading people and delivery


• Lead and personally participate in 24x7 on-call rotations as senior incident commander and technical escalation point for the pod


• Partner with peer VPs across the Cloud Center of Excellence - the leaders of the five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the leaders of the pods within Foundations (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) - to align roadmaps and remove cross-team and cross-pod blockers


• Champion AWS Well-Architected Framework adoption across all six pillars and drive continuous improvement against operational, security, reliability, performance, cost, and sustainability outcomes


• Contribute to and curate the private Terraform module library that powers self-service infrastructure for application teams, including module standards, versioning, deprecation, and contribution patterns


• Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies (sprint planning, standups, backlog grooming, retrospectives) and partner with the RTE and PMO on delivery commitments and dependencies


• Represent the pod in executive forums, architecture review boards, internal audit, and customer engagements; communicate technical risk and trade-offs to non-technical executives

Requirements

• 10+ years of progressive technical experience including 5+ years in cloud infrastructure or platform engineering leadership; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline (or equivalent work experience)


• 5+ years of hands-on production AWS at scale in a multi-account landing zone, with 4+ years of authoring production Terraform in a private module ecosystem delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions


• 1+ year experience as a direct people manager or Technical team lead of engineering teams of 5+ engineers, including hiring, performance management, compensation, and difficult personnel decisions


• 5+ years experience leading and personally participating in 24x7 production on-call rotations in a fast-paced, security-conscious, regulated environment (financial services strongly preferred)


• 4+ years of operating Amazon EKS at scale in production (multi-cluster, multi-account, regular controlled upgrades) with Terraform and Helm, in active partnership with a FinOps function

Core Competencies

Demonstrates extensive expertise in leading container platform strategies and operations, particularly with Amazon EKS, while ensuring cost efficiency and platform stability. Proven ability to manage and mentor engineering teams, drive architectural decisions, and implement best practices in cloud infrastructure.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Amazon EKS Operations


• Terraform Development


• Cloud Infrastructure Leadership


• 24x7 On-Call Management


• Cost Efficiency Strategies

ATS Optimization Keywords

Hard Skills

• Cloud Infrastructure


• Platform Engineering


• Container Strategy


• CI/CD Integration


• GitOps


• SRE Practices


• Capacity Planning


• Error Budgets


• Terraform


• Helm

Soft Skills

• Team Leadership


• Mentoring


• Performance Management


• Communication


• Collaboration

Certifications & Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science


• Engineering or Related Discipline

Industry Keywords

• Financial Services


• Multi-Account Landing Zone


• Security-Conscious Environment


• Regulated Environment


• Operational Excellence

Tools & Technologies

• Amazon EKS


• Terraform Cloud


• GitHub Actions


• Karpenter


• Kubecost


• ArgoCD


• Flux


• Internal Developer Platform


• Agile/Scrum


• AWS Well-Architected Framework