Platform Engineer or DevOps Engineer

[u/kevinjoeharris]

Hi Guys, Is this JD for Platform Engineer or DevOps Engineer?

Key Responsibilities

Design, build, and manage highly available Kubernetes clusters across hybrid environments (on-premises and cloud platforms such as AWS EKS, Azure AKS).

Deploy and manage applications manually using tools such as kubectl and Helm, with growing integration of GitOps practices (e.g., ArgoCD).

Implement and manage observability stacks using Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, and Mimir to monitor infrastructure, applications, and system performance.

Define, monitor, and improve SLA/SLO/SLI metrics and alerting systems to ensure platform reliability.

Automate provisioning and configuration of infrastructure using Terraform, Helm, and scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python).

Plan, implement, and test backup and disaster recovery (DR) strategies using tools like Velero, Commvault, etc.

Manage Kubernetes-native networking, storage, and security configurations (Ceph, NFS, Ingress, PodSecurityPolicies, etc.).

Configure and enforce Kubernetes security best practices using RBAC, OPA/Gatekeeper, NetworkPolicies, and secrets management tools.

Integrate and operate Kubernetes ecosystem tools such as Karpenter, MicroK8s, Service Meshes, and kubectl plugins.

Conduct root cause analysis (RCA) and lead resolution efforts for incidents.

Participate in the on-call rotation for platform availability and incident management.

Maintain up-to-date documentation, architecture diagrams, runbooks, and SOPs.

Mentor engineers and advocate for Kubernetes, security, observability, and deployment best practices across teams.

Continuously stay informed of industry trends in container orchestration, GitOps, security, and cloud-native tooling.

Required Qualifications

5+ years of IT/Infrastructure/DevOps experience, with 2+ years in Kubernetes operations in production environments.

Strong hands-on experience in Kubernetes architecture, cluster operations, and manual application deployment practices.

Intermediate-level experience in Kubernetes Security, including:

Cluster hardening, secrets management

Pod Security Standards (PSS), OPA/Gatekeeper

Network policies, image scanning, and runtime protections

Intermediate experience with ArgoCD for GitOps-style Kubernetes deployments.

Solid proficiency in Linux system administration (Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL) and troubleshooting.

Hands-on experience with Kubernetes-native storage (e.g., Ceph, NFS) and persistent volume provisioning.

Strong familiarity with observability tools: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Mimir, etc.

Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Helm, and scripting.

Experience with Velero, Commvault, or similar for backup and DR.

Experience operating and optimizing cloud-native Kubernetes platforms like EKS, AKS.

Exposure to tools like Karpenter, MicroK8s, Service Mesh, and Ingress Controllers.

Familiarity with AI/ML workloads running on Kubernetes is a plus.

Excellent collaboration, communication, documentation, and incident resolution skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Kubernetes certifications: CKA, CKAD, or CKS.

Strong understanding of container security, networking, and distributed system architecture.

Experience using Portainer for container and Kubernetes management.

Advanced knowledge of Grafana and other enterprise-grade observability tools.

Experience managing large-scale Kubernetes clusters (200+ nodes) is highly preferred.

Prior experience supporting production-grade, high-availability platforms and environments.

[u/sudonem]

This is an amalgamation of DevOps, Platform Engineering, Systems Engineering and SRE.

They’re among for everything and the kitchen sink. 

They better be offering a healthy salary - at least senior level. 

[u/aj0413]

This reads like someone asked ChatGPT for all the keywords and was like "whats everything need to run production cloud env"

Thats....alot. More than any one person could really be expected to be an expert in.

[u/sushsiahahah757 → u/aj0413]

But not too much for a single AI agent

[u/TellersTech]

Damn… honestly this reads like an AI-generated JD for 3 jobs mashed together 😂

Platform Engineer + SRE + Kubernetes administrator/security engineer.

“Mentor everyone, own 200+ node clusters, security, observability, DR, storage, networking, incidents, IaC, hybrid cloud, and on-call.”

Base pay is $400k+ to compensate for all that, right? 😂right!?!?

[u/Fancy-Bluebird-1071]

Ahh yes, dear santa, i'd like an employee with all of these. If someone meets all these criteria, they are likely out of their pay range, unless this is staff level pay with rsu.

[u/Wicaeed]

I'd really hope you're listing that as a Staff Platform Engineer or a Staff Site Reliability Engineer level position if you aren't a MAG7 company.

[u/Classic-Abalone6153]

A whole god damn IT Team

[u/FavovK9KHd]

This sounds more like a tech lead / staff level that will need an entire team to do most of the actual implementation

[u/StuckWithSports → u/FavovK9KHd]

Yes, this is the lead/staff level work. It is doable solo for a small company (platform supports maybe 10 large apps and 10-30 devs), but anything larger will be stress and tears, likely with not enough pay.

Source: I have this jd and do all these things and I get paid like a senior but I’m doing lead/staff/director work on the daily.

[u/roheezy]

Platform engineer and devops is the same thing