Lead, Platform Engineering

Mastercard•O'fallon, MO

About The Position

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all. Overview The Lead Platform Engineer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for designing, building, and maintaining automation frameworks and platform services that support largescale hybrid infrastructure environments. This role focuses on engineering reusable automation patterns using Chef, Infrastructure as Code, and DevOps tooling to deliver consistent, secure, and self-service infrastructure capabilities. The ideal candidate brings strong DevOps engineering experience, deep knowledge of Chef (Infra, Habitat, or Automate), and a passion for building scalable automation systems, not performing manual operations.

Requirements

5–8+ years of experience in DevOps, platform engineering, infrastructure automation, or configuration management roles.
Strong hands-on experience with Chef Infra, including cookbook development, policy files, Test Kitchen, and InSpec.
Experience managing largescale configuration management environments (Chef Server, Chef Automate, or similar).
Solid understanding of Linux systems administration, OS hardening, and configuration of lifecycle management.
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and on Prem virtualization (VMware, HyperV).
Strong scripting or programming skills (Ruby preferred for Chef, plus Python, Bash, or PowerShell).
Experience with CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps.
Strong understanding of Git workflows, branching strategies, and code review practices.
Ability to troubleshoot complex automation and infrastructure issues across hybrid environments.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Chef Habitat or application-level automation.
Experience with Chef Automate for compliance, reporting, and fleet orchestration.
Familiarity with Terraform or other IaC tools for provisioning infrastructure.
Experience with policyascode tools (OPA, Conftest, Sentinel).
Background in security hardening, compliance frameworks, or CIS benchmarks.
Exposure to Kubernetes, Helm, or container orchestration.
Experience with monitoring and observability platforms (Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, ELK).
Knowledge of network automation or infrastructure APIs.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain Chef cookbooks, recipes, roles, and policy files to automate configuration management across cloud and prem environments.
Build and maintain Chef Automate or equivalent orchestration pipelines for compliance, reporting, and fleet management.
Engineer reusable automation frameworks, including shared libraries, templates, and patterns for consistent infrastructure provisioning.
Integrate Chef automation with CI/CD pipelines, secrets management, artifact repositories, and enterprise governance controls.
Implement automated testing and validation for Chef code using tools such as Test Kitchen, InSpec, and ChefSpec.
Collaborate with cloud, platform, and security teams to define and enforce configuration baselines, compliance policies, and hardened system standards.
Support the design and implementation of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep) for provisioning compute, network, and platform services.
Troubleshoot complex automation, configuration, and infrastructure issues across hybrid environments.
Contribute to platform engineering initiatives such as self-service catalogs, GitOps workflows, and automated remediation.
Document automation patterns, architectural decisions, and operational runbooks.

Benefits

insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance)
flexible spending account and health savings account
16 weeks of new parent leave
up to 20 days of bereavement leave
80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time
25 days of vacation time
5 personal days
10 annual paid U.S. observed holidays
401k with a best-in-class company match
deferred compensation for eligible roles
fitness reimbursement or on-site fitness facilities
eligibility for tuition reimbursement