Title : Principal DevOps Engineer

Reports To : Manager, Global Infrastructure

Business Unit : CES/Product House

Overview of Job Function :

Principal DevOps Engineer works within the R&D organization and serves as a senior technical leader responsible for defining, architecting, and driving the organization's DevOps, cloud, automation, and platform engineering strategy. This role combines deep hands-on expertise with architectural vision to build scalable, secure, resilient, and highly automated platforms that accelerate software delivery, operational excellence, and business outcomes.

The ideal candidate possesses 12+ years of practical industry experience across cloud platforms, infrastructure automation, CI/CD, observability, platform engineering, reliability engineering, and enterprise-scale DevOps transformations. This individual is expected to lead by influence, mentor engineering teams, establish technical standards and best practices, drive architectural decisions, and remain a hands-on individual contributor for critical initiatives.

Principal Duties and Essential Responsibilities :

- Provide technical leadership and architectural direction for enterprise DevOps, cloud, automation, and platform engineering initiatives.

- Architect and govern enterprise platforms including Azure, AWS, GitHub, Jenkins, Artifactory, SonarQube, Splunk/Datadog, VMware vCenter/vSphere, and VMware vRealize Automation (vRA).

- Design, implement, and optimize scalable CI/CD platforms using Jenkins and GitHub Actions, including reusable Shared Libraries and workflow frameworks.

- Lead Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, and self-service platform initiatives using Terraform, PowerShell, Python, PowerCLI, and cloud-native technologies.

- Define and implement observability, reliability, disaster recovery, and operational excellence standards, including DORA metrics, SLAs, SLOs, RTOs, and RPOs.

- Drive cloud transformation, modernization, DevSecOps, SRE, FinOps, and platform engineering best practices across the organization.

- Mentor engineering teams, establish technical standards, conduct architecture reviews, and promote excellence in engineering.

- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable, and cost-effective platform solutions aligned with business objectives.

- Serve as the highest-level technical escalation point for complex infrastructure, cloud, automation, and CI/CD challenges.

- Evaluate emerging technologies, AI-driven capabilities, and industry best practices to continuously improve developer productivity and platform maturity.

Minimum Requirements :

- Bachelors degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.

- 12+ years of experience in DevOps, Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, or related technology disciplines.

- 8+ years of hands-on experience architecting and managing Azure and AWS cloud environments at enterprise scale.

- 6+ years of experience designing, implementing, and managing Kubernetes and container-based platforms.

- Deep expertise in architecting, implementing, securing, upgrading, and operating enterprise-scale Jenkins and GitHub Actions environments.

- Proven experience building and governing Jenkins Shared Libraries, GitHub Actions reusable workflows, CI/CD frameworks, and enterprise delivery standards.

- Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, Bicep, ARM Templates, or CloudFormation.

- Advanced experience developing automation solutions using PowerShell, Bash, Python, and PowerCLI.

- Hands-on experience with VMware technologies including vCenter, vSphere, and VMware vRealize Automation (vRA).

- Experience with enterprise observability platforms such as Splunk, Datadog, Azure Monitor, and CloudWatch.

- Strong experience with GitHub Enterprise, Artifactory, SonarQube, and enterprise DevOps toolchains.

- Proven experience establishing and improving engineering performance through DORA metrics, operational KPIs, and data-driven decision making.

- Hands-on experience designing and operating highly available platforms with defined SLA, SLO, RTO, and RPO objectives.

- Strong understanding of resilience engineering, disaster recovery planning, business continuity, incident management, and operational governance.

- Demonstrated architectural and design-thinking capabilities with the ability to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.

- Proven track record of leading large-scale technical initiatives, influencing engineering organizations, and mentoring technical teams.

- Strong leadership, communication, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills with the ability to drive outcomes both as a technical leader and hands-on individual contributor.

Additional Preferred Requirements :

- Experience leading enterprise-scale cloud modernization and digital transformation programs.

- Experience in designing and implementing Internal Developer Platforms (IDP) and self-service engineering capabilities.

- Experience migrating legacy CI/CD platforms and workloads to cloud-native and modern DevOps solutions.

- Experience implementing DevSecOps, SRE, FinOps, Platform Engineering, and Infrastructure Governance frameworks.

- Experience supporting hybrid-cloud environments integrating Azure, AWS, VMware, and vRA platforms.

- Experience creating executive-level dashboards and reporting for DORA metrics, platform health, service availability, cost optimization, and engineering performance.

- Experience driving organization-wide improvements in deployment velocity, change success rate, recovery times, developer productivity, and service reliability.

- Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Azure AI Services, Azure OpenAI, and other AI-powered engineering productivity platforms.

- Understanding of AI/ML concepts and experience leveraging AI for automation, observability, troubleshooting, operational efficiency, and developer productivity.

- Relevant certifications in Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub, VMware, Splunk, Datadog, or cloud architecture disciplines.

- Exceptional technical leadership, mentoring, stakeholder management, communication, and problem-solving skills.

- Strong passion for continuous learning, innovation, engineering excellence, and adoption of emerging technologies.