Principal Cloud Platform Engineer

Business Unit:
Cubic Transportation Systems

Company Details:
When you join Cubic, you become part of a company that creates and delivers technology solutions in transportation to make people's lives easier by simplifying their daily journeys, and defense capabilities to help promote mission success and safety for those who serve their nation. Led by our talented teams around the world, Cubic is committed to solving global issues through innovation and service to our customers and partners.

We have a top-tier portfolio of businesses, including Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) and Cubic Defense (CD). Explore more on

Job Details:
Principal Platform Engineer –
FinOps
We are seeking an exceptional Principal Platform Engineer to join our growing Platform Engineering team. The right candidate is someone who has deep expertise in AWS cloud infrastructure and a proven track record of building platforms that scale. Your mission will be to provide technical leadership for our platform strategy, architect solutions that enable hundreds of engineers, and drive the evolution of our infrastructure practices. You'll work with cutting-edge technologies and set the technical direction for platform capabilities that power our entire engineering organization.

Your Assignment

• Serve as the technical leader and subject matter expert for one or more platform domains while maintaining broad platform expertise.
• Define and drive the platform engineering roadmap in collaboration with engineering leadership and product teams.
• Architect scalable, secure, and cost-effective AWS infrastructure patterns that become the foundation for all engineering teams.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives to solve complex infrastructure challenges and improve platform capabilities.
• Establish platform engineering standards, best practices, and governance models that scale across the organization.
• Mentor and grow Staff and Senior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation.
• Represent platform engineering in architecture reviews, security assessments, and strategic planning sessions.
• Drive adoption of emerging technologies and practices that enhance platform capabilities and developer productivity.
• Lead by example in incident response and post-mortem culture, turning failures into platform improvements.

Your Qualifications
Core Platform Engineering Qualifications
Technical Leadership

• Recognized as a technical authority in platform engineering with influence across the organization.
• Drives architectural decisions that shape the future of the platform and engineering practices.
• Balances technical excellence with pragmatic solutions that deliver business value.

Strategic Thinking

• Translates business objectives into platform capabilities and technical roadmaps.
• Anticipates future needs and designs platforms that scale with organizational growth.
• Identifies and addresses systemic issues before they become critical problems.

Collaboration & Influence

• Builds strong relationships with engineering teams, product leadership, and stakeholders.
• Influences without authority, driving consensus on platform standards and practices.
• Champions platform adoption through education, evangelism, and exceptional developer experience.

Technical Qualifications
Required:

• 8+ years of experience building and operating AWS infrastructure at scale, with at least 3 years in a senior or lead role.
• Expert-level knowledge of AWS services and architecture patterns across compute, networking, storage, and security domains.
• Advanced expertise in Infrastructure-as-Code, with proven experience designing reusable Terraform modules and managing complex state.
• Deep experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration at scale, including cluster management and workload optimization.
• Strong software engineering skills with proficiency in multiple languages (Python, Go, etc.) for building platform tools and automation.
• Proven track record of designing and implementing self-service platforms that improve developer productivity.
• Experience leading large-scale infrastructure migrations, modernizations, or transformations.
• Expertise in at least one specialized domain (networking, security, observability, FinOps, or DevOps).
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and leading technical communities of practice.

Preferred:

• Multiple AWS certifications including Professional and Specialty levels.
• Contributions to open-source projects or published technical content.
• Experience with multi-account AWS organizations and landing zone architectures.
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks (SOC2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS) and security automation.
• Experience with FinOps practices and implementing cost optimization at scale.
• Track record of speaking at conferences or leading technical workshops.
• Experience building platforms in regulated industries or high-security environments.

FinOps Focus
Additional Responsibilities

• Implement cloud cost optimization strategies that reduce waste without impacting performance.
• Build cost visibility dashboards and chargeback/showback models for engineering teams.
• Develop automated policies for resource optimization (rightsizing, scheduling, spot usage).
• Partner with Finance and Engineering teams to forecast and optimize cloud spend.
• Establish FinOps practices including tagging standards, budget alerts, and cost anomaly detection.

Additional Qualifications

• Deep understanding of AWS pricing models and cost optimization techniques.
• Experience with AWS Cost Management tools (Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost and Usage Reports).
• Proficiency with FinOps tools (CloudHealth, Cloudability, or similar).
• Strong analytical skills and experience with data visualization tools.
• Knowledge of Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot Instance strategies.
• FinOps Certified Practitioner certification preferred.
• Experience building cost optimization automation and reporting pipelines.

What We Offer

• Opportunity to build platforms that impact hundreds of engineers and millions of users.
• Work with cutting-edge AWS services and cloud-native technologies.
• Strong engineering culture focused on automation, reliability, and developer experience.
• Continuous learning opportunities including AWS certifications and conference attendance.
• Collaborative environment where your ideas and contributions directly shape our platform.

Worker Type:
Temporary Worker