DevOps Platform Lead

Role Summary The DevOps / Platform Lead is a strategic, hands-on role responsible for leading the design, implementation, and evolution of enterprise cloud infrastructure and developer platforms. The role bridges development and operations, driving the adoption of cloud-native technologies, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). You will lead a high-performing team of DevOps and Platform engineers, foster a culture of automation, and collaborate closely with Software Engineering, Security, and Product teams to ensure platforms are scalable, secure, resilient, and optimized for developer velocity. Key Responsibilities Team Leadership & People Management - Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of DevOps and Platform engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and accountability. - Manage resource allocation, project timelines, sprint planning, and team performance evaluations. - Define career paths, establish clear objectives and key results (OKRs), and conduct regular one-on-one meetings to support team members' professional growth. Platform Architecture & Strategy - Define the long-term vision and roadmap for the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to reduce cognitive load on engineering teams and accelerate time to market. - Architect scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure using best practices in microservices and containerization. - Lead the migration from legacy infrastructure to modern, cloud-native architectures. CI/CD & Automation Engineering - Standardize, optimize, and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines across all environments to support safe, repeatable, and frequent deployments. - Enforce Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as the foundational approach for environment provisioning and configuration management. - Eliminate manual interventions by automating routine operational tasks and building self-service tools for developers. Site Reliability & Observability - Own the availability, performance, and monitoring of production environments, establishing and tracking critical service-level indicators (SLIs), service-level objectives (SLOs), and service-level agreements (SLAs). - Implement comprehensive observability frameworks, including centralized logging, metrics collection, distributed tracing, and proactive [Needs hiring manager validation: the source wording ends with proactive averting]. - Lead incident response management, conduct blameless post-mortems, and ensure root causes are addressed to prevent recurrence. DevSecOps & Compliance - Partner with the Security team to integrate automated security scanning—including static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), dependency scanning, and container vulnerability assessments—directly into CI/CD pipelines. - Manage and enforce identity and access management (IAM) policies, secrets management, and network security controls using the principle of least privilege. - Ensure the platform complies with relevant industry standards and regulations, including ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA. - Design, implement, and audit compliance controls across all cloud environments to ensure adherence to relevant industry standards and regulations. - Lead the engineering team through internal and external compliance audits, ensuring documentation, system logs, and architecture diagrams are accurate and up to date. - Enforce corporate governance policies, data retention practices, and disaster recovery (DR) compliance protocols. FinOps & Cost Optimization - Monitor, analyze, and optimize cloud infrastructure spending across all environments without compromising performance or reliability. - Implement auto-scaling policies, right-sizing strategies, and data-retention lifecycle management to eliminate waste. - Provide regular financial reporting and forecasts on cloud resource consumption to executive leadership. Stakeholder Management - Act as the primary liaison between the platform engineering team and key internal business units, including Product Management, Software Engineering Leads, Quality Assurance, and Executive Leadership. - Gather requirements and feedback from internal development teams, treating developers as internal customers, to continuously improve the platform experience and developer velocity. - Clearly communicate technical roadmaps, infrastructure risks, system availability reports, and the business value of DevOps initiatives to non-technical stakeholders. Qualifications and Experience - Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience. - 8–10 years of experience in DevOps, Cloud Engineering, or Systems Architecture. - At least 3 years of experience in a managerial or team lead capacity, directly managing engineering teams. - Proven experience designing and managing production infrastructure at scale on major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). - Strong background managing high-traffic, 24/7 production environments, with a focus on zero-downtime deployments. Preferred Certifications and Knowledge - Cloud Architecture: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect, or Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert. - DevOps / Platform: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional or Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert. - Kubernetes: Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD). - Methodologies: Agile/Scrum certifications, such as CSM or PMI-ACP, and knowledge of the ITIL framework. Originally posted on Himalayas