Specialist Platform Engineer

Boardroom Appointments; Sandton; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,100,000; Part time

Job summary

Boardroom Appointments is seeking a Specialist Platform Engineer for a contract position. The role focuses on server hardware, VMware, Linux and Windows Server within a large enterprise, with a current VMware certification required; AWS certification is advantageous.

You will lead lifecycle improvements, deliver maintainable features, identify risks, and drive telemetry-informed design decisions, ensuring a scalable, self-service, resilient platform.

Qualifications

• Experience with server hardware in large enterprise environments.
• VMware certification current is required.
• AWS certification is advantageous.
• Strong knowledge of vSphere ESX/vCenter and vRA.
• Familiarity with Dell OpenManage, Pure Storage, and DC networking.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end development/engineering lifecycle improvements.
• Deliver simple, maintainable features with few defects.
• Identify risks and drive telemetry-driven design decisions.
• Improve test infrastructure and platform performance.
• Collaborate across teams to align with release plans.
• Document designs and produce solution blueprints.

Skills

VMware

Linux Server

Windows Server

Server hardware

vSphere

Aria Automation vRA

Aria Automation Config Salt

Pure Storage

Data Center Networking

Tools

Dell OpenManage

Cisco Data Center Networking

Arista Networking

Job description

About the job Specialist Platform Engineer

Contract position

• Demonstrable experience in server hardware, VMware, Linux Server, and Windows Server in a large enterprise function.
• VMware certification is required (must be current).
• AWS certification is advantageous.
• Core VMware competencies:
  
• vSphere (ESX, vCenter)
• Aria Automation 8 (vRA) Troubleshooting, integration, orchestration - critical
• Aria Automation Config (Salt) Troubleshooting and integration - critical
• Working knowledge of Pure storage, Arista and/or Cisco Data Centre Networking, Dell OpenManage (not critical, but definitely useful)

Responsibilities:

• Positively contribute to, define and implement the development/engineering lifecycle (end to end) and lead lifecycle improvements over successive releases
• Produce simple, extensible, and maintainable features with very few defects.
• Continually works to find and fix defects
• Leverage platform (service design and code) and engineering technical expertise to proactively identify risks and prevent defects
• Identify patterns that reveal errors and unanticipated problems, and influence telemetry analytics design decisions
• Identify and Apply metrics to drive the quality and stability of code
• Ensure consistent, usable, forward-looking, maintainable test infrastructure
• Apply object orientated design in development and draw from a large base of design patterns
• Uphold our technical principles of: self-service, scalability, re-usability, resilience & stability in all development practices and deliver feature sets that sustainably deliver on these principles
• Apply knowledge and expertise in User / Customer experience to deliver a stable user experience in all design and development that is simple, elegant, and useful
• Proactively identify development practices that work well & leverage and improve these for future solution design and deployment
• Document feature set and constituent design information to produce solution design blueprints and validation collateral
• Based on engineering & platform expertise and a sound knowledge of the business & customer requirements consistently provide key ideas for the enhancement & optimization of the platform
• Develop & document complete designs and implement testing processes that identify and eradicate platform or service-wide problems / improve on platform performance
• Demonstrate a strong commitment to the quality and ongoing quality assurance of the product/services in use, and take appropriate action
• Ensure alignment to platform and service release plans for effective deployment of solution designs
• Drive and implement design review processes & practices with the team & participate & positively contribute to design reviews for the feature area led by others
• Apply expertise in engineering and available technologies to enable effective review processes
• Cascade review lessons learnt for the benefit of the broader team
• Enable problem resolution across technical teams, apply and or facilitate root cause analysis, deeply understand the root causes of issues and find ways to resolve them (sustainably)
• Continuously review and find ways to optimize team processes & improve engineering quality, productivity, and team responsiveness to feedback and changing priorities
• Optimize, refactors and reuse components to improve performance and maintainability ensuring maximum efficiency, effectiveness, and return on investment
• Take accountability for maintaining platform standards and best practices, and drive adoption across multiple service teams
• Demonstrate knowledge of, identify and find required data for the ongoing monitoring & improvement of the platform feature area
• Proactively monitor the performance of the platform features & solutions
• Translate monitoring data into clearly articulated descriptions of opportunities & defects, their impact to the customer scenario and to the product or service as a whole, and the relevance to product and service targets (within scope of the job)
• Cascade and communicate these insights across the team to influence platform decision making
• Leverage production performance monitoring and customer data to make feature area technical design and implementation decisions
• Synthesize data from multiple sources and present and define concise, impactful conclusions that influence feature teams to solve defects and meet quality targets
• Accountability: Financial & Cost Optimization, Risk and Governance
• Understand the platform cost model and the optimal cost : serve of the platform, use this understanding to drive the platform efficiency and effectiveness objectives
• Participate in incident management and and DR activity applying critical thinking, problem solving & technical expertise to get to the bottom of major incidents
• Apply Group risk (e.g. Architecture, development, change and release etc.), governance, compliance and regulatory standards and frameworks
• Proactively identify technical risks and mitigate these (pre, during and post release)
• Update / Design all feature documentation aligned to the organization technical standards and risk / governance frameworks
• Accountability: People
  
• Proactively and effectively (time and quality) collaborate and drive collaboration on features across feature team (e.g. managing dependencies & interdependencies, conflict resolution, information & best practice sharing, problem resolution outside of own area etc.)
• Apply collaboration skills in development practices & issue resolution regardless of team boundaries and lead communication with relevant stakeholders through to conclusion
• Contribute to a high performance team environment & culture as a high performing member of a self-directed team aligned to agile working
• Leverage coaching techniques in all team related activity to drive a higher quality service, design and deployment of technical solutions
• Proactively seek and provide feedback across a range of stakeholders for the benefit of the team & leverage feedback to consistently improve platform solution delivery
• Coach and mentor other engineers and support engineering teams on technical solutions and problem resolution & proactively seek coaching and mentoring from others
• Participate in peer reviews, testing, problem solving within and across the broader team
• Cascade platform performance feedback and ensure capability development across teams to enable efficient & effective platform service delivery
• Drive the design of content, tools and materials for strategy alignment, education & adoption processes to be applied across stakeholder groups