Overview
Remote
On Site
Hybrid
Accepts corp to corp applications
Contract - W2
Contract - Long term
Skills
Devops
Amazon Web Services
Terraform
Metrics
Kubernetes
Linux
Configuration management
Microsoft Azure
automation
Cyber Security
Ansible
architecture
Workflows
disaster recovery
Load Balancing
Decommissioning
Infrastructure Management
Mentoring
dashboards
Identity and Access Management
Puppet
Process Management
File Systems
Infrastructure Engineering
Firewalls (Computer Science)
Product Family Engineering
Safety Principles
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Reliability
Technical Supervision
Role-Based Access Control
Software Debugging
Technical Management
Cloud Computing
Lifecycle Management
Administration of Computer Systems
Bare Metal
Computer Networks
Data Centers
Domain Name System (DNS)
Hypervisor
Operational Excellence
Region Management
Software Vulnerability Management
Data Logging
Job Details
Title: Principal Platform Engineer & Team Lead
Position Type: Contract
Location: Remote across USA/ Canada
About the Role
We are building an infrastructure management platform from scratch-and we need a Principal Platform Engineer who builds infrastructure, not just designs it. You will own the platform's core infrastructure capabilities: Terraform modules, Kubernetes clusters, networking, bare metal provisioning, and the automation that makes infrastructure self-service.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will write Terraform daily, debug networking issues, configure hypervisors, and set the technical bar for infrastructure engineering. You will work alongside a Principal Software Engineer who owns the application stack, while you own everything under it.
Key Responsibilities
As a Principal Platform Engineer and infrastructure lead, you will:
- Own infrastructure architecture and design for platform capabilities, ensuring they meet reliability, security, and operational requirements across compute, storage, networking, and IAM domains.
- Lead the design and implementation of infrastructure as code using Terraform, OpenTofu, and similar tools, including module design, state management, and infrastructure automation patterns.
- Define and document golden path workflows for common infrastructure operations, establishing standardized processes for provisioning, lifecycle management, scaling, and decommissioning.
- Architect container, virtualization, and bare metal infrastructure including Kubernetes, CNI, hypervisors, PXE boot, and data center infrastructure.
- Design networking and security infrastructure including VPC architecture, network policies, security groups, load balancing, and multi-region strategies.
- Drive platform engineering standards for infrastructure as code, DevOps practices, security hardening, and operational procedures, ensuring they are adopted across teams.
- Mentor and grow infrastructure engineers, providing clear technical direction on platform engineering principles, DevOps practices, and infrastructure architecture.
- Continuously improve platform capabilities by identifying infrastructure gaps, evaluating new technologies and practices, and driving adoption of platform engineering principles.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of infrastructure/platform engineering experience, with 4+ years in senior/ staff/ principal roles operating production infrastructure.
- Expert-level Terraform and OpenTofu proficiency-module design, state management, and building reusable infrastructure patterns.
- Deep Kubernetes experience including cluster operations, CNI, storage classes, RBAC, and troubleshooting production issues.
- Strong experience with virtualization-hypervisors, VM lifecycle, and virtualization platform configuration.
- Hands-on bare metal experience including PXE boot, provisioning automation, and hardware lifecycle management.
- Deep Linux expertise-internals, system administration, kernel concepts, filesystems, and process management.
- Strong networking knowledge including VPC design, security groups, load balancing, DNS, and firewall configuration.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Google Cloud Platform/Azure) and their core primitives: compute, storage, networking, and IAM.
- Proficiency with configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef, or Puppet) and infrastructure automation patterns.
- Experience building observability for infrastructure-metrics, logging, alerting, and operational dashboards.
- Proven ability to own and operate complex infrastructure end-to-end, from design through production.
- Track record of mentoring engineers, setting infrastructure standards, and raising the bar for operational excellence.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building internal developer platforms or self-service infrastructure with guardrails.
- Multi-cloud or hybrid cloud experience with consistent infrastructure patterns across providers.
- Service mesh and advanced container networking experience (CNI, network policies).
- Data center operations experience including rack layout, cabling, and physical infrastructure.
- Experience with backup, disaster recovery, and snapshot automation strategies.
- Infrastructure security background-hardening, vulnerability management, and secure design.
- Prior experience at infrastructure or platform engineering companies.
Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description. The position description has been reviewed for accuracy and Dice believes it to correctly reflect the job opportunity.