Senior Platform Engineer (PTA) (Crossplane & Backstage)

Sabenza IT & Recruitment; Pretoria; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,600,000; Full time

Job summary

Sabenza IT & Recruitment in Pretoria seeks a senior Platform Engineer to design and deliver scalable, production-grade platforms that empower engineering teams with self-service capabilities using cloud-native patterns.

The role emphasizes AWS/Kubernetes expertise, infrastructure as code with Terraform, Pulumi, Crossplane, and robust CI/CD pipelines via ArgoCD/Flux, Helm, and Backstage to accelerate developer productivity and reliability.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in a Platform Engineering capacity – building self-service platforms and abstractions used by other engineering teams.
• 2 - 3+ years of experience as a Software Engineer using languages such as Java, JavaScript, Golang or Python.
• 6+ years of experience working with Public Cloud, with strong hands-on AWS experience.
• 6+ years of experience with containerisation and container platforms.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate scalable, secure, highly available platforms within AWS environments.
• Deliver self-service capabilities for engineering teams via internal developer platforms.
• Implement and advance GitOps, IaC, and CI/CD practices to improve reliability and velocity.

Skills

AWS cloud expertise

Self-service platform development

Platform engineering

DevOps practices

Cloud native design

Tools

ArgoCD

Flux

Helm

Kustomize

Terraform

CDK

Pulumi

Crossplane

Backstage

Prometheus

Grafana

CloudWatch

X-Ray

Job description

A senior-level Platform Engineering opportunity for an experienced engineer with a strong track record of building scalable, production-grade platforms and self-service capabilities for engineering teams. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise across AWS, Kubernetes, GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, automation and internal developer platforms, with a strong focus on building reliable, scalable and cloud native solutions.

Expert Knowledge

• AWS cloud architecture and services, with strong understanding of AWS best practices and the Well-Architected Framework.
• Building platform APIs, automation, system-level tooling and/or internal developer platforms.
• Infrastructure as Code tooling and practices, including Terraform, CDK, Pulumi and Crossplane.
• Container orchestration principles and Kubernetes; CKA certification preferable. Cloud-native systems, distributed systems and service architectures, including associated design trade-offs.
• Building and operating scalable, secure and highly available platforms within AWS environments.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in a Platform Engineering capacity – building self-service platforms and abstractions used by other engineering teams.
• 2 - 3+ years of experience as a Software Engineer using languages such as Java, JavaScript, Golang or Python.
• 6+ years of experience working with Public Cloud, with strong hands‑on AWS experience.
• 6+ years of experience with containerisation and container platforms.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes GitOps practices using ArgoCD / Flux and Helm/Kustomize.
• Strong experience implementing monitoring and observability solutions using tools such as CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki and X‑Ray.
• Strong understanding of DevOps practices and CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD.
• Proven experience building complex, production-grade platforms and making these available for self-service consumption by engineering teams.
• Hands‑on experience with Crossplane, ArgoCD and Backstage is non negotiable.
• Proven experience building Kubernetes Operators is non‑negotiable.