Sr Staff, Software Engineer

Gap Inc.•Pleasanton, CA

About The Position

About the Role The Schedule Team is part of the Engineering Platform organization at GapTech, responsible for designing, building, and operating Gap’s enterprise containerization platform that supports applications across all brands and global markets. This role focuses on advancing and simplifying Kubernetes at scale, enabling application teams to securely deploy, operate, and scale containerized workloads without needing deep platform expertise. The platform is built on Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and integrates with critical services such as service mesh, GitOps, CI/CD, observability, and security tooling. As a Sr. Staff Software Engineer, you will act as a technical leader who drives platform strategy, architecture, and execution. This is a hands-on systems and platform engineering role that includes participation in an on-call rotation to support highly available, business-critical production systems.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
3+ years of experience in Systems, Platform, or DevOps Engineering within a large-scale enterprise environment.
Strong hands-on experience with Linux systems administration, Docker, and Kubernetes in production; cloud platforms (Azure preferred) and AKS experience strongly desired.
Proven experience building and operating container platforms, not just deploying applications.
Proficient in modern DevOps and platform tooling, including Terraform, GitOps, and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, ArgoCD).
Strong programming and scripting skills in Python, Go, PowerShell, and shell scripting.
Experience developing and managing Helm charts for Kubernetes deployments; familiarity with service mesh technologies (e.g., Istio).
Experience with container registries such as Azure Container Registry and JFrog Artifactory.
Understanding of cloud-native application patterns, microservices, and 12-factor principles.
Ability to assess complex systems, analyze data, and recommend practical solutions; strong communication skills and ability to influence and build consensus across teams.
Passion for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

Lead the design, evolution, and technical strategy of Gap’s Kubernetes-based container platform.
Build and operate Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, including networking, identity, security, storage, and lifecycle management.
Advance Kubernetes platform capabilities such as cluster provisioning and upgrades, multi- cluster and multi-environment architectures, and hybrid cloud readiness using infrastructure-as-code.
Integrate Kubernetes with core platform services including Service Mesh (Istio) for traffic management and security, centralized logging/monitoring/alerting, and GitOps + CI/CD pipelines (ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps).
Develop and maintain Helm charts, reusable deployment patterns, and platform templates to standardize application onboarding.
Serve as a subject matter expert for internal engineering teams adopting containerization and Kubernetes; provide guidance and hands-on support for onboarding and migrations.
Deliver final-tier platform support for high-impact incidents, outages, and production events; participate in an on-call rotation and drive root cause analysis and long-term remediation.
Identify and implement improvements to platform reliability, performance, security, and cost efficiency.
Build and maintain infrastructure automation using Terraform and GitOps practices.
Mentor and guide junior and mid-level engineers, acting as a trusted technical advisor; share learnings, designs, and innovations across the broader engineering organization.
Contribute to and leverage open-source technologies where appropriate.