Senior Platform Engineer

TAG - The Aspen Group

Sr. Platform Engineer helping lead GCP cloud foundations design and operationalizing AI for TAG.

Posted 5/30/2026full-timeChicago • Illinois, New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $150,000 - $180,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSAzureCloudGoGoogle Cloud PlatformKubernetesNGINXPythonTerraform

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Set technical direction for the platform: drive architecture decisions, write ADRs, evaluate trade-offs, and bring the team along.
Design, build, and operate platform services on GCP, covering compute (GKE, Cloud Run, Compute Engine), networking, IAM, secrets, observability, and CI/CD integrations.
Author and maintain Terraform modules and a clean state strategy across multiple GCP projects and environments.
Import, refactor, and clean up legacy infrastructure when needed.
Build and operate GKE clusters: workload identity, networking, ingress (nginx), autoscaling, upgrades, policy, and cost controls.
Stand up serverless and PaaS patterns for application teams (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, Workflows) with sensible defaults baked in.
Partner with our AI / Software Engineers to operationalize agents and models: Vertex AI Agent Engine deployments, model endpoints, eval and observability pipelines, prompt/secret management, and CI/CD for AI artifacts.
Implement secure-by-default CI/CD with GitLab using Workload Identity Federation: no long-lived keys, least-privilege service accounts, reproducible deploys.
Contribute to Azure and AWS work as needed: networking, identity, storage, and helping align patterns across clouds.
Improve developer experience: golden paths, paved roads, internal docs, and templates that make the right thing the easy thing.
Mentor other engineers on the team through code review, pairing, design feedback, and knowledge-sharing.
Raise the technical bar across CloudOps.
Lead incident response and post-incident reviews for systems you own and help mature how the team operates on call.

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of hands-on cloud engineering or platform/SRE experience, with at least 3 years primarily in GCP.
Demonstrated technical leadership: setting architecture direction, driving cross-team decisions, and mentoring other engineers.
Expert-level Terraform skills: module design, state management at scale, refactoring real-world (messy) infrastructure, and comfort importing orphaned resources.
Deep production Kubernetes experience: GKE preferred, including workload identity, RBAC, ingress controllers (nginx), Helm, cluster upgrades and operations, and policy/admission controls.
Solid grasp of serverless and PaaS patterns (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, or equivalents) and a strong point of view on when to choose them over containers or VMs.
Working knowledge of IAM done right: least-privilege design, workload identity federation, service account hygiene, and break-glass patterns.
CI/CD experience (GitLab, GitHub Actions, or equivalent) including keyless auth to cloud providers and pipeline design for multi-environment promotion.
Proficient in Python and/or Go and shell for tooling, automation, and glue code.
Understanding of how Platform Engineering supports AI operationalization: model and agent deployment patterns, secrets and credentials for LLM/model APIs, observability for non-deterministic systems, and the difference between "demo working" and "production ready" for AI workloads.
Strong written and verbal communication skills: comfortable writing design docs, leading reviews, and influencing engineers outside your immediate team.
Nice to Have: Hands-on experience with Vertex AI, Agent Engine, or other model-serving platforms.
Experience operating multi-cloud or hybrid environments (GCP + Azure + AWS).
Background working alongside FinOps to drive cloud cost visibility and accountability.
Experience contributing to or building internal developer platforms (Backstage, custom portals, Port.io, etc.).
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect
Google Cloud Professional DevOps Engineer
AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional)
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Professional
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert
CKA / CKAD / CKS (Kubernetes certifications)
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate

Benefits

Comp & perks

paid time off
health
dental
vision
401(k) savings plan with match

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

GCPTerraformKubernetesCloud RunCloud FunctionsCI/CDPythonGoIAMserverless

Soft Skills

technical leadershipmentoringcommunicationincident responsecollaborationdesign feedbackknowledge-sharinginfluencingdocumentationproblem-solving

Certifications

Google Cloud Professional Cloud ArchitectGoogle Cloud Professional DevOps EngineerAWS Certified Solutions ArchitectAWS Certified DevOps EngineerMicrosoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect ExpertMicrosoft Certified: DevOps Engineer ExpertCKACKADCKSHashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate