Platform Engineer

Details • Blacksburg, VA

12d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Platforms Team within Enterprise Solutions and Enabling Technologies is part of the Division of Information Technology at Virginia Tech. This team builds and maintains the university's Internal Developer Platform (IDP), enabling development teams across the institution to deploy and operate their applications with minimal friction. The Platform Engineer will design and build platform capabilities that reduce cognitive load for application developers by abstracting infrastructure complexity. This role treats the platform as a product, with internal development teams as customers, and focuses on enabling self-service workflows while supporting multi-tenant environments across the university. Members of our team will have an opportunity to learn and grow in an environment where all members of the team are expected to: Design and build platform capabilities that enable developer self-service and improve developer experience (DevEx). Work as part of an Agile team to estimate engineering effort, plan implementation, and deploy changes that meet requirements for functionality, performance, reliability, and adherence to best practices. Leverage public cloud services and on-premises infrastructure to build and operate multi-tenant Kubernetes platforms. Define and maintain golden paths for common deployment patterns that platform consumers can adopt. Solve complex technical challenges to provide high-value solutions to the university. Create and maintain up-to-date documentation of services and provide on-call support as required. Gather feedback from platform consumers to inform roadmap priorities. Be self-motivated with the capacity to work independently with minimal supervision, as well as in a team environment.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or a combination of education, training, and experience that equates to a Master's degree
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification required, or the ability to obtain CKA certification within one year of hire
• Experience building and operating Kubernetes platforms
• Experience with GitOps workflows and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• Experience designing CI/CD pipelines
• Programming experience in Python or Bash
• Understanding of networking and security principles

Nice To Haves

• AWS or Kubernetes Application Developer Certification (CKAD, or AWS Certified)
• Production Kubernetes experience in enterprise environments
• Experience with Flux or ArgoCD
• Experience with policy-as-code (OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno)
• JavaScript/React experience for developer portal customization

Responsibilities

• Design and build platform capabilities that enable developer self-service and improve developer experience (DevEx).
• Work as part of an Agile team to estimate engineering effort, plan implementation, and deploy changes that meet requirements for functionality, performance, reliability, and adherence to best practices.
• Leverage public cloud services and on-premises infrastructure to build and operate multi-tenant Kubernetes platforms.
• Define and maintain golden paths for common deployment patterns that platform consumers can adopt.
• Solve complex technical challenges to provide high-value solutions to the university.
• Create and maintain up-to-date documentation of services and provide on-call support as required.
• Gather feedback from platform consumers to inform roadmap priorities.
• Be self-motivated with the capacity to work independently with minimal supervision, as well as in a team environment.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees