Principal Platform Engineer

Avant • Chicago, IL

63d • $130,000 - $190,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Infrastructure team is responsible for the platform, tools, and infrastructure supporting Avant's customer-facing products. As a team member, you will be developing tools to create and maintain cloud infrastructure, automate the management of complex service-oriented applications, and develop frameworks to ensure the Avant platform's stability and scalability.

Requirements

• Strong development experience with infrastructure-as-code languages and tooling: Terraform, HCL, Python, Go, and Bash
• Expert knowledge of Kubernetes ecosystem including custom controllers, operators, CRDs, and advanced scheduling with Karpenter and KEDA
• Proven experience designing and implementing scalable platform solutions that empower developer self-service and accelerate delivery cycles
• Experience architecting and managing multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters with proper resource isolation, security controls, and GitOps workflows
• Deep expertise with containerization technologies including Docker, containerd, and OCI-compliant runtimes
• Experience building robust CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, and FluxCD for both infrastructure and application delivery
• Demonstrated ability to implement and manage cloud-native service meshes (Istio, Linkerd) and ingress solutions (NGINX, Contour)
• Expertise with AWS cloud services, particularly EKS, ECR, VPC networking, IAM, and integration patterns with Kubernetes
• Experience implementing HashiCorp stack (Vault, Consul, Terraform) for secrets management, service discovery, and infrastructure provisioning
• Proficiency with observability platforms including Datadog, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry for comprehensive platform monitoring
• Experience managing stateful services in Kubernetes including databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB), message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ), and caching layers (Redis, Memcached)
• Experience implementing policy enforcement using OPA/Gatekeeper and secure supply chain practices with Cosign/Notary
• Expertise with infrastructure automation using Spacelift, Atlantis, or similar IaC workflow tools
• Experience integrating data platforms like Databricks and workflow engines like Airflow into Kubernetes environments
• Strong troubleshooting skills across the entire platform stack from networking to application runtime issues

Responsibilities

• Design and implement production-grade Kubernetes platforms on AWS, incorporating EKS using Terraform.
• Develop automated infrastructure provisioning systems using workflows with Terraform, Helm, and ArgoCD for declarative configuration management
• Architect and maintain cloud-native platform services including service meshes, API gateways, and identity management systems
• Build developer self-service platforms with custom operators, platform APIs, and internal developer portals using tools developed internally.
• Implement comprehensive observability solutions with Datadog and Sentry, enabling automated alerting, distributed tracing, and performance optimization
• Design and maintain secure multi-tenant environments with robust network policies, pod security standards, and least-privilege access controls
• Create and maintain infrastructure scaling solutions using Karpenter, Cluster Autoscaler, and KEDA for optimized resource utilization
• Implement robust disaster recovery and business continuity strategies including multi-region deployments and automated failover systems
• Establish platform security practices including supply chain security, image scanning, and runtime threat detection
• Lead the migration of traditional workloads to containerized environments with minimal disruption and maximum automation
• Continuously improve platform reliability through chaos engineering, failure testing, and SLO/SLI measurements
• Research and evaluate emerging cloud-native technologies, providing technical leadership on adoption strategies

Benefits

• Choice of great Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance Plan options
• 401(k) match
• Flexible Time Off
• Flexible Work Environment - (i.e. Mon/Tues/Thurs in-person)
• Generous Paid Parental Leave, Adoption Assistance and Post-parental leave ramp-up program
• Lunch Allowance (Fooda) and In-office Snacks
• Summer Fridays
• Fun In-Office and Virtual Social Events

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees