Platform Architect

Role Summary

Work with us to build modern Insurtech AI underpinned solutions, we are a growing team of hands on architects striving to build high quality solutions for our internal and external customers. The Platform Architect designs and builds internal developer platforms and platform engineering capabilities across the ecosystem, creating self-service platforms, toolchains, and abstractions enabling development teams to build, deploy, and operate applications efficiently with focus on developer experience and productivity.

Key Responsibilities

Internal Developer Platform Strategy

Kubernetes Platform Engineering

Platform Components & Tooling

Infrastructure as Code & Policy

Developer Experience Optimization

Security & Compliance

Security & Compliance

Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Architecture

Platform Enablement & Adoption

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

Required Skills

Platform Engineering & Architecture
- Internal Developer Platform (IDP) concepts, Platform as a Product mindset, developer experience optimization, golden paths and paved roads, self-service infrastructure, and platform API design.

Kubernetes & Containers
- Deep expertise in Kubernetes architecture, multi-cluster designs, operators and CRDs, Helm charts, Kustomize, service mesh (Istio, Linkerd, Consul), container runtime security, and pod security standards.

Platform Components & Tools
- Backstage developer portal, ArgoCD and Flux for GitOps, Crossplane for infrastructure provisioning, HashiCorp Vault for secrets management, Terraform and Pulumi for IaC, and container registries (Harbor, Azure Container Registry).

Cloud Platforms - Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Apps, Azure services (Virtual Networks, Load Balancers, Application Gateway, Key Vault), AWS EKS, Google GKE, and hybrid cloud patterns.

CI/CD & Automation
- GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps Pipelines, Jenkins, Tekton, pipeline-as-code patterns, automated testing, and deployment strategies (blue/green, canary, progressive delivery).

Observability & Monitoring
- Prometheus and Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, Loki for log aggregation, Jaeger and Tempo for distributed tracing, OpenTelemetry, Azure Monitor, and Application Insights.

Security & Policy
- Kubernetes RBAC, pod security policies, OPA for admission control, Kyverno for policy enforcement, Falco for runtime security, image scanning (Trivy, Anchore), and secrets management.

Networking
- Kubernetes networking (CNI plugins, network policies), service mesh concepts, ingress controllers (NGINX, Traefik), load balancing, and DNS management.

Required Experience

7+ years in DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering roles. 3+ years building internal platforms. Deep Kubernetes and container expertise.

Certifications

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305), HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate. Valuable additions: Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS), CNCF Certified GitOps Associate, Istio Certified Associate.

Key Competencies

Platform Product Mindset
- Treating platform as product serving internal customers, gathering feedback, measuring satisfaction, prioritizing features, and continuously improving based on user needs.

Technical Leadership
- Leading platform architecture decisions, establishing standards, mentoring platform engineers, and evangelizing platform adoption across organization.

Developer Empathy
- Understanding developer workflows, pain points, and needs to design platform capabilities improving productivity and reducing cognitive load.

Innovation & Learning
- Staying current with CNCF ecosystem, platform engineering patterns, cloud-native technologies, and emerging capabilities driving platform evolution.