Director of Platform Engineering

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority•Boston, MA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

The Director of Platform Engineering role is responsible for scaling software engineering productivity through infrastructure as code and enabling 10+ software product teams to manage their own code pipelines, AWS infrastructure, security, observability, reliability and cost profiles. Platform Engineering partners with product teams to understand emerging reliability and other needs as they architect and build new products. The Director will work closely with engineering teams and other technology stakeholders to ensure that platform capabilities, tools, and practices support ongoing product development needs and the overall goals of the department. The role includes supporting the development, maintenance, and improvement of cloud infrastructure, developer tooling, and engineering practices to help teams deliver reliable, secure, and high-quality services.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution.
Seven (7) years of progressive experience in an agile software development environment, including work with cloud or distributed systems supporting software engineering teams.
Five (5) years of experience leading, managing, and/or supervising the work of infrastructure or platform engineering.
Experience with two (2) or more programming languages from the TIOBE top 20 (https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/).
Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
Experience supporting budgeting, usage monitoring, or cost-related activities for engineering tools or cloud services.
A high school diploma or GED with an additional seven (7) years of directly related experience substitutes for the bachelor’s degree requirement.
An associate’s degree from an accredited institution and an additional three (3) years of directly related experience substitutes for the bachelor’s degree requirement.
A master’s degree in a related subject substitutes for two (2) years of general experience.
A nationally recognized certification, or statewide/professional certification in a related field substitutes for one (1) year of experience.
Ability to effectively read, comprehend, communicate, and respond to instructions, orders, signs, notices, inquiries, etc. in English.
Be at least eighteen (18) years of age, except if participating in an approved high school internship / co-op program.
Ability to commute to assigned work locations in the Boston, MA metro area, as required by the role.
Ability to provide internal and external customers with courteous and professional experiences.
Ability to work effectively, independently, and as part of a diverse workforce team (or supervise, if required).
Ability to uphold the rights and interests of the MBTA while building and maintaining effective relationships with employees and co-workers.
Ability to adhere to rules, regulations, collective bargaining agreements (if applicable), and policies of the MBTA, including the EEO, anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, and anti-retaliation policies.
Have a satisfactory work record for the two (2) years immediately prior to the closing date of this posting (unless if current student or recent graduate), including overall employment, job performance, discipline, and safety records (infractions and/or offenses occurring after the closing of the posting and before the filling of a vacancy may preclude a candidate from consideration for selection).
Ability to pass a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check, comprehensive background screening, and / or medical Clinic screening, potentially including physical examination and drug and alcohol screenings.
Ability to work all shifts and / or locations assigned, directed, or necessary for this position, including (for some transit / operations roles) up to twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week as necessary to accommodate severe weather conditions, emergencies, or any other circumstances that may potentially impact service or the safety of service.
Intern / co-op staff must be enrolled full or part-time in an accredited educational program and maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 2.5 for the entire duration of the internship / co-op.
Additionally, interns / co-ops must have valid work authorization and U.S. Social Security Number prior to starting pre-employment screenings / pre-boarding, working in their positions, and throughout the duration of their program.
All employees must be legally authorized to work in the United States and on an unrestricted basis.
The MBTA does not have an employer work sponsorship program.
However, if you have unrestricted work authorization, or are sponsored by a separate entity, you are welcome to apply.
Further, all persons hired will require a U.S. Social Security Number prior to starting the position and employees will be required to complete a Form I-9 to verify their identity and eligibility to work in the U.S.
Candidates should ensure they arrive on time, are prepared, can remain for the duration, and if remote, are in a quiet place without distraction, for the interview.
Candidates who do not attend their interview without advance authorization, including an email confirmation of a rescheduled time/date from Human Resources, will be considered a no-show and disqualified from consideration for the position.
On-call or 24/7 Positions: Employees working in this classification must be available to respond to page / text / call and report to work as determined by assigned department or the Authority.
Essential / Emergency Staff: During declared "states of emergency," employees working in this classification are required to report to work for their assigned work hours or as directed by management.

Nice To Haves

Experience in public sector, transportation agency, and/or civic technology team.
Experience developing code as part of an open-source project.
Experience with Terraform/OpenTofu.
Experience supporting internal developer tooling or self-service platform capabilities.
Experience supporting reliability, observability, or incident management practices in engineering environments.

Responsibilities

Establish, communicate and execute a strategic roadmap, including establishing and monitoring ongoing metrics, tracking roadmap milestones and actively managing technology risks.
Build strong relationships within the department, with stakeholders across the MBTA, and in the technology and transportation industries to ensure that our work is aligned with the agency’s mission and best practices.
Proactively manage usage and budget for related vendors in the space.
Ensure implementation of software engineering best practices and adherence to organizational policies, compliance requirements, and cross-functional standards impacting team operations.
Perform people management responsibilities including mentoring managers, hiring, supporting growth, expectation setting, performance management, and goal setting.
Ensure a culture of continuous improvement, improving processes as needed.
Define, advocate and apply cloud architecture principles and standards to enhance public service delivery and support the strategic goals of the MBTA.
Ensure MBTA’s cloud infrastructure is reliable, secure, and responsive to the needs of product teams.
Partner with software engineering teams under a DevOps model to design/architect use of infrastructure and delegate infrastructure management responsibilities, including infrastructure patterns to meet security requirements and product SLO levels.
Participate in on-call rotation for technology systems and services.
Buy, implement and maintain self-service software development capabilities, standardizing CI/CD pipelines, and creating patterns that reduce deployment friction for developers.
Advocate for practices to shift-left for testing and security feedback.
Offer tooling for observability and incident management, including to report, manage and investigate incidents related to production issues.
Partner with MBTA Information Security and product teams to ensure product software is compliant with the MBTA security posture and in line with security best practices and cloud/software development standards, including any EOL (end-of-life) policies.
Offer tooling for common software engineering needs, such as authentication and authorization systems.
Perform all other duties and projects that may be assigned.
Directly supervise up to twelve (12) platform software engineers and the platform engineering management team.