Lead Platform Engineer

Lead Platform Engineer

Location: Cleveland, OH

Type: Full-Time / Contract-to-Hire

Schedule: Hybrid

Overview

Our client is looking for a highly technical Lead Platform Engineer to help lead and rebuild their Container Platform team. This team is responsible for the enterprise Kubernetes infrastructure environment, supporting both Azure AKS and on-prem VMware environments.

This is not a traditional DevOps role. The ideal candidate will have deep experience designing, deploying, administering, and maintaining Kubernetes platforms and container infrastructure at an enterprise scale.

The Lead Platform Engineer will work closely with architecture and engineering teams to establish platform standards, improve scalability and compliance, and support internal enablement teams across the organization. This role also requires someone interested in mentoring junior engineers and helping shape the long-term platform roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, maintain, and upgrade enterprise Kubernetes platforms and container infrastructure
• Manage and support hybrid environments across Azure AKS and on-prem VMware infrastructure
• Build and maintain Kubernetes clusters, networking, ingress controllers, and platform-level services
• Establish and maintain platform standards, security, compliance, and resiliency practices
• Partner with architecture and engineering teams on platform strategy and roadmap initiatives
• Support automation and Infrastructure as Code initiatives using Terraform and related tooling
• Troubleshoot complex infrastructure and networking issues across containerized environments
• Maintain observability and monitoring solutions across the platform
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to overall team growth and technical direction
• Collaborate cross-functionally to enable application and product teams across the enterprise

Top Skills Required

• Kubernetes platform administration and architecture
• Azure infrastructure experience, specifically AKS
• Terraform

Additional Preferred Experience

• Docker and container management platforms
• VMware / on-prem infrastructure
• Ansible
• Linux/Unix administration
• Monitoring and logging tools such as ELK, Sysdig, Splunk, or Nagios
• GitOps tools such as ArgoCD
• Secrets management and certificate lifecycle management
• Networking, ingress controllers, load balancing, and firewall management

Qualifications

• 6–8+ years of experience in platform engineering or infrastructure engineering
• Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes environments and container orchestration
• Experience deploying, maintaining, and upgrading Kubernetes clusters in enterprise environments
• Experience working within hybrid cloud/on-prem environments
• Strong troubleshooting and infrastructure support experience
• Experience mentoring or leading junior engineers is highly preferred
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field preferred

Preferred Certifications

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
• Azure Solutions Architect
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer

Team Environment

• Team currently consists of one senior engineer and two junior engineers
• Role will partner closely with a newly hired Domain Architect
• Opportunity to help rebuild and shape the future direction of the platform engineering organization