Platform Engineer Lead

Capital Group•Charlotte, NC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a senior individual contributor within the Banzai SDLC / DevOps team, you are first and foremost a software developer and technologist who builds, optimizes, and modernizes the toolchains that engineering teams depend on every day. You will design and deliver enterprise‑grade developer tooling—treating the SDLC as a product and developers as your primary consumers—while operating at the intersection of developer experience, platform engineering, and build automation. You will help evolve the core SDLC toolchain end‑to‑end: CI/CD pipeline orchestration, code‑quality and static‑analysis, artifact and package management, and the build‑automation frameworks that tie them together. You approach these systems as a solutions expert—architecting quality gates, artifact promotion strategies, dependency governance, and pipeline patterns that are fast, reliable, and self‑service. You will also help define and deliver standardized SDLC capabilities—including automation, security integration, observability, and AI‑assisted development—that reduce cognitive load while preserving flexibility for teams to innovate. These capabilities will be delivered through opinionated golden paths, reusable patterns, and clear ways of working that scale across business units. A core responsibility of this role is hands‑on adoption and enterprise enablement of AI‑assisted software development. You will actively use, evaluate, and push the boundaries of tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and similar AI development environments—integrating them into your own daily workflow first—and then harden and operationalize them as first‑class engineering capabilities. This includes building the enterprise controls, guardrails, and usage patterns required to safely adopt these tools at scale, while demonstrating fundamentally new ways of working that improve productivity, quality, and onboarding efficiency. This role is deeply hands‑on. You will lead through technical authority, working software, and solution design, partnering across Platform Engineering, Architecture, Security, and application teams to ensure solutions are intuitive, scalable, and aligned with enterprise standards.

Requirements

Developer at heart who happens to build platforms.
Operate as a senior individual contributor (PE5), influencing platform direction, standards, and engineering practices through deep technical expertise.
Experience building and optimizing CI/CD pipelines, build systems, and developer toolchains.
Deep understanding of build automation (compilation, dependency resolution, artifact lifecycle, caching strategies).
Hands‑on solution‑level expertise with Harness.io (pipeline orchestration, deployment strategies, governance policies).
Hands‑on solution‑level expertise with SonarQube (quality gates, SAST integration, technical‑debt management).
Hands‑on solution‑level expertise with package and artifact management (Artifactory, Nexus, or similar; dependency governance and promotion workflows).
Experience building developer tooling, SDLC platforms, and DevOps capabilities that serve many teams and are operated as long‑lived platform products.
Strong knowledge of modern software delivery practices, including CI/CD, GitOps, cloud‑native platforms, and automated governance.
Practitioner of AI‑assisted development—using tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot daily.
Experience defining enterprise‑ready patterns for AI development tools, including secure access and identity integration, data handling and prompt context boundaries, cost visibility and usage controls, auditing, logging, and observability, and clear 'approved ways of working' for developers.
Passion for toolchain optimization and modernization.
Comfortable enabling new engineering ways of working, such as AI‑augmented design, implementation, and review, while maintaining Company's expectations for quality, security, and operational rigor.
Ability to partner effectively with Product Management, Architecture, Security, and SRE to balance speed, safety, and standardization.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience).
10+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, or DevOps roles, with a strong foundation as a developer who builds and ships software.
Experience with AI‑assisted development tools and practices (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) — as a daily practitioner.
Experience building controls and guardrails into developer platforms.
Experience with cloud platforms and container orchestration (AWS preferred; Kubernetes and Docker).
Experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation (Terraform or equivalent).
Software development in TypeScript, Python, Java, or Go.
Experience with API and microservice design in distributed systems.
Experience with DevOps and DevSecOps practices across the full SDLC.
Experience with CI/CD pipeline design and orchestration (Harness.io preferred; GitHub Actions, or similar also valued).
Experience with code quality and static analysis platforms (SonarQube, SonarCloud, or equivalent).
Experience with artifact and package management (Sonatype Nexus, Artifactory, or cloud‑native registries; dependency governance and promotion strategies).
Experience with build automation and tooling (Gradle, Maven, npm/yarn, MSBuild, or similar; reproducibility, and performance optimization).
Understanding of observability concepts including metrics, logs, traces, and open standards such as OpenTelemetry.
Experience creating technical documentation, including platform standards, architectural designs, and developer‑facing guidance.

Nice To Haves

Strong opinions about what makes a toolchain fast, reliable, and developer‑friendly.
Clear point of view on how AI tools change the way software is built.
Experience with GitHub Actions, SonarCloud, Sonatype Nexus, or cloud‑native registries.
Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and Docker.
Experience with Terraform.
Experience with Gradle, Maven, npm/yarn, or MSBuild.
Experience with OpenTelemetry.

Responsibilities

Design and deliver enterprise‑grade developer tooling, treating the SDLC as a product and developers as primary consumers.
Operate at the intersection of developer experience, platform engineering, and build automation.
Evolve the core SDLC toolchain end‑to‑end: CI/CD pipeline orchestration, code‑quality and static‑analysis, artifact and package management, and build‑automation frameworks.
Architect quality gates, artifact promotion strategies, dependency governance, and pipeline patterns that are fast, reliable, and self‑service.
Define and deliver standardized SDLC capabilities, including automation, security integration, observability, and AI‑assisted development.
Deliver capabilities through opinionated golden paths, reusable patterns, and clear ways of working that scale across business units.
Lead hands‑on adoption and enterprise enablement of AI‑assisted software development.
Actively use, evaluate, and push the boundaries of AI development tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot.
Build enterprise controls, guardrails, and usage patterns for safe adoption of AI tools at scale.
Demonstrate new ways of working that improve productivity, quality, and onboarding efficiency.
Lead through technical authority, working software, and solution design.
Partner across Platform Engineering, Architecture, Security, and application teams.
Modernize and optimize SDLC toolchains, replacing manual friction with automation.
Raise quality bars through better tooling.
Institutionalize new ways of working through well‑designed solutions.
Communicate clearly with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
Translate platform strategy into concrete developer outcomes.
Continuously learn, experiment, evaluate emerging tools, and incorporate learnings into scalable platform capabilities.