VP, Container Engineering

LPL Financial•Fort Mill, SC

18d•$149,350 - $248,848•Hybrid

About The Position

As the VP, Container Engineering, you lead the Containers team in LPL's Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE). You own the strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations of LPL's container platform — primarily Amazon EKS — across our multi-account landing zone, and you set the direction for potential expansion into ECS as a workload-migration target and OpenShift on-premises as a hybrid runtime. You partner closely with the FinOps pod (within Foundations) to make EKS more cost-effective while improving stability, and you deliver a paved-road, self-service experience for application teams. LPL is an AWS-first CCOE: a multi-account landing zone with 100+ private reusable Terraform modules that enable 60+ AWS services, all delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions. You are both a people leader for a globally distributed team across the US and LPL's India GCC and a hands-on senior platform engineer who contributes directly to cluster upgrades, Terraform/Helm modules, and incident response.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive technical experience including 5+ years in cloud infrastructure or platform engineering leadership; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline (or equivalent work experience)
5+ years of hands-on production AWS at scale in a multi-account landing zone, with 4+ years of authoring production Terraform in a private module ecosystem delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions
1+ year experience as a direct people manager or Technical team lead of engineering teams of 5+ engineers, including hiring, performance management, compensation, and difficult personnel decisions
5+ years experience leading and personally participating in 24x7 production on-call rotations in a fast-paced, security-conscious, regulated environment (financial services strongly preferred)
4+ years of operating Amazon EKS at scale in production (multi-cluster, multi-account, regular controlled upgrades) with Terraform and Helm, in active partnership with a FinOps function
Pragmatic technology selection: chooses the right runtime (EKS, ECS, or OpenShift) for the workload and the constraints, rather than defaulting to one answer
Strong cost-ownership instincts paired with deep technical expertise in Kubernetes, AWS, and IaC
Player-coach who is comfortable in code reviews, architecture sessions, and people 1:1s in the same day
Continuous learner, especially in cloud-native, IaC, platform engineering, and applied AI
Sets vision and translates ambiguous strategy into executable engineering roadmaps
Bias for self-service, automation, and reducing toil for downstream internal customers
Builds high-trust relationships across the US and India organization and across functions (Architecture, Security, FinOps, Application Engineering, Network, Audit)
Calm, decisive incident commander; fosters a strong post-incident learning culture
Excellent written and verbal communication, executive presence, and ability to influence without direct authority
Thrives in matrixed, fast-paced, regulated environments with imperfect information

Nice To Haves

Experience operating ECS in production and/or migrating workloads between ECS and EKS
Experience operating OpenShift on-premises (OCP, OKD) and/or hybrid Kubernetes patterns
Experience with service mesh (Istio, App Mesh, Linkerd) in regulated environments
Strong experience with GitOps (ArgoCD or Flux), Karpenter, IRSA / EKS Pod Identity, network policy, and image supply chain
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or MBA
Experience building, scaling, or leading globally distributed engineering teams across the US and India / GCC
Experience integrating agentic AI / GenAI tooling (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Bedrock, MCP) into platform, IaC, and engineering practice
Strong scripting / programming proficiency in Python, Bash, or PowerShell
AWS Solutions Architect - Professional
AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Associate
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004) or Authoring & Operations
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
Open-source contributions, public technical writing, or conference speaking on cloud, IaC, or platform engineering topics
Experience with Backstage or another Internal Developer Platform (IDP)
Experience with FinOps practices and cloud cost management at scale

Responsibilities

Lead the Containers team in CCOE: own the strategy, architecture, implementation, and operations of LPL's container platform — primarily Amazon EKS — across the multi-account landing zone
Set the multi-year container strategy: cluster topology, multi-tenancy, upgrade cadence, supported add-ons, ingress, service mesh (where applicable), GitOps (ArgoCD/Flux), and CI/CD integration
Partner closely with the FinOps pod (within Foundations) to drive container cost efficiency: Karpenter, Spot, right-sizing, namespace chargeback, Kubecost or equivalent, cost-anomaly detection, and platform-level FinOps guardrails
Drive platform stability, reliability, and SRE practices: SLOs, golden signals, error budgets, capacity planning, controlled upgrades, and blast-radius reduction
Deliver a self-service container experience for application teams: opinionated Terraform/Helm modules, golden paths, scaffolding, namespace vending, RBAC automation, and Internal Developer Platform (Backstage-class) integration
Co-own multi-account landing zone integration for containers in partnership with the Network Engineering, Security & Governance, FinOps, and Functional Design Engineering & Strategy pods within Foundations (IRSA, Pod Identity, network policy, Network Firewall integration, image signing, runtime defense)
Lead the evaluation, design, and (if approved) operationalization of additional workload runtimes: ECS as a workload-migration target for cost and operational simplicity, and potential support for OpenShift on-premises as a hybrid runtime
Embed agentic AI capabilities into the team's engineering practice (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Bedrock, MCP servers, agentic IaC and review workflows) and into the platform's self-service experience for internal customers
Embed agentic AI capabilities into the container platform and developer workflow: AI-assisted manifest generation, automated upgrade impact analysis, copilots for cluster operators, and MCP-backed agents for self-service
Recruit, develop, mentor, and retain a globally distributed team of senior cloud engineers across LPL's US offices and India Global Capability Center (GCC)
Own all people-management responsibilities for the pod including hiring, onboarding, weekly 1:1s, performance management, compensation planning, career development, and certification-path execution per the CCOE certification matrix
Operate as a player-coach: spend meaningful time hands-on in Terraform code, design reviews, peer reviews, and incident response while leading people and delivery
Lead and personally participate in 24x7 on-call rotations as senior incident commander and technical escalation point for the pod
Partner with peer VPs across the Cloud Center of Excellence — the leaders of the five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the leaders of the pods within Foundations (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) — to align roadmaps and remove cross-team and cross-pod blockers
Champion AWS Well-Architected Framework adoption across all six pillars and drive continuous improvement against operational, security, reliability, performance, cost, and sustainability outcomes
Contribute to and curate the private Terraform module library that powers self-service infrastructure for application teams, including module standards, versioning, deprecation, and contribution patterns
Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies (sprint planning, standups, backlog grooming, retrospectives) and partner with the RTE and PMO on delivery commitments and dependencies
Represent the pod in executive forums, architecture review boards, internal audit, and customer engagements; communicate technical risk and trade-offs to non-technical executives