Senior Platform Engineer (Crossplane & Backstage)

Sabenza IT & Recruitment; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Sabenza IT & Recruitment is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to design, build and run scalable, production-grade platforms and self-service capabilities that empower engineering teams. You will shape cloud-native foundations, automation and internal developer platforms to boost reliability, speed and developer experience.

You will architect and operate secure, highly available AWS-based platforms, implement IaC with Terraform, CDK, Pulumi and Crossplane, and lead Kubernetes operations with

Qualifications

• 5+ years of Platform Engineering experience designing self-service platforms for engineering teams.
• 6+ years hands-on public cloud experience with deep AWS expertise.
• 6+ years containerisation experience and platform orchestration.
• 2–3+ years software engineering in Java, JavaScript, Golang or Python.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes, GitOps and Helm/Kustomize.

Responsibilities

• Design and build self-service platforms and platform APIs for internal teams.
• Operate cloud-native platforms on AWS with high availability and security.
• Evolve Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CDK, Pulumi and Crossplane.
• Develop Kubernetes operators and extend platform capabilities.
• Drive CI/CD and DevOps practices with GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD.
• Implement monitoring with CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana and X-Ray.

Skills

AWS

Kubernetes

GitOps

ArgoCD

Flux

Helm

Kustomize

Crossplane

Backstage

Operators

Terraform

CDK

Pulumi

CI/CD

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI/CD

CloudWatch

Prometheus

Grafana

Loki

X-Ray

Well-Architected Framework

Cloud-native

Distributed systems

Self-service platforms

Tools

Terraform

CDK

Pulumi

Crossplane

ArgoCD

Backstage

Job description

We are looking for a Senior Platform Engineer to design, build and operate scalable, production-grade platforms and self-service capabilities that empower engineering teams. You will shape cloud-native foundations, automation and internal developer platforms that improve reliability, speed and developer experience.

What you will do:

• Design and build self-service platforms, platform APIs, automation and system-level tooling used by other engineering teams.
• Architect and operate highly available, secure and scalable cloud-native platforms on AWS.
• Implement and evolve Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CDK, Pulumi and Crossplane.
• Build and operate Kubernetes environments with strong GitOps practices (ArgoCD / Flux, Helm and Kustomize).
• Develop Kubernetes Operators and contribute to platform extensibility.
• Implement monitoring, observability and reliability practices using CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki and X-Ray.
• Drive CI/CD and DevOps practices with tools such as GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD.
• Apply AWS best practices and the Well-Architected Framework across platform design and operations.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to reduce toil, improve developer experience and enable self-service consumption of platform capabilities.

Requirements

What you bring:

• 5+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, building self-service platforms and abstractions for engineering teams.
• 6+ years of hands-on experience with public cloud, with deep expertise in AWS.
• 6+ years of experience with containerisation and container platforms.
• 2–3+ years of software engineering experience using languages such as Java, JavaScript, Golang or Python.
• Expert knowledge of AWS cloud architecture, services and the Well-Architected Framework.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration principles (CKA certification preferred).
• Strong experience with GitOps using ArgoCD / Flux and Helm / Kustomize.
• Hands-on experience with Crossplane, ArgoCD and Backstage (non-negotiable).
• Proven experience building Kubernetes Operators (non-negotiable).
• Strong experience implementing monitoring and observability solutions (CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, X-Ray).
• Strong understanding of DevOps practices and CI/CD tooling (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD).
• Proven track record of building complex, production-grade platforms and making them available for self-service use.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native systems, distributed systems and service architecture trade-offs.