Lead Platform / Full Stack Engineer (Kubernetes & API Platform)

Core technology stack

• Kubernetes / EKS / Security – Expert
• Kong Konnect & APIOps – Expert
• MuleSoft Anypoint Platform – Expert
• CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) – Expert
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) – Expert
• GitOps (Argo CD / Flux) – Strong
• Container Security (Trivy, Cosign, Falco, OPA/Kyverno) – Strong
• Observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Splunk, New Relic) – Strong
• AWS (Primary), with AI/Bedrock exposure preferred

Product & Service Direction, Design & Performance Management

• Define product and technical strategy in collaboration with the CIO and business product owners (end-to-end/full stack)
• Act as the primary interface with senior business stakeholders, owning the product-owner relationship
• Take full accountability for product and solution delivery, including risk ownership
• Apply design thinking to develop scalable, architecturally sound solutions
• Lead the creation of solution blueprints aligned to short-, medium-, and long-term organisational strategy
• Collaborate across CTO, CSO, and architecture teams to guide cost-effective technology decisions
• Drive scoping, prioritisation, and integration planning across front-end, back-end, and integration teams
• Ensure alignment to enterprise architecture and infrastructure standards (IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, containerisation)
• Monitor and optimise platform and application performance across the enterprise

DevOps & Platform Engineering

• Operate and optimise production EKS environments hosting API gateways, AI runtimes, and integrations
• Own Kong Konnect (control and data planes, plugins, traffic policies including LLM/MCP)
• Lead APIOps practices using decK, OpenAPI, Spectral, and GitOps pipelines
• Manage and evolve MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and lead its consolidation into Kong
• Implement supply chain security (Trivy, Cosign, SBOMs, OPA/Kyverno)
• Ensure runtime security and compliance (Falco, CIS benchmarks, audit logging)
• Own GitOps delivery frameworks (Argo CD / Flux)
• Mentor and guide senior engineers while enforcing architectural best practices

Delivery Management

• Lead agile delivery across squads covering both Run and Change initiatives
• Collaborate with transformation teams for effective resource planning and programme delivery
• Embed and sustain agile practices (e.g., retrospectives, continuous improvement)
• Strengthen product owner capability to support informed decision-making
• Partner with Risk, Security, CTO, and other stakeholders to ensure alignment and governance

Background and Experience Required

• Minimum 4+ years of hands-on experience with production Kubernetes environments at scale
• 3+ years proven experience in regulated industries (banking, insurance, or healthcare)
• Strong background in full-stack platform engineering, DevOps, and API management
• Demonstrated ability to lead enterprise platform design and delivery

Must-have Skills (Mandatory Skills)

• Full Kubestronaut Certification (non-negotiable):
  • Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA)
  • Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA)
  • Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
  • Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) (all certifications must be active)
  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate (active)
• Expert-level Kubernetes / EKS experience
• Production experience with Kong Konnect (or Kong Gateway / Enterprise)
• Production experience with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform (CloudHub, RTF, API Manager, DataWeave)
• Strong AWS expertise (EKS, IAM, KMS, VPC)
• APIOps tooling (decK, OpenAPI, Spectral, GitOps pipelines)

Beneficial Skills (Desired Skills)

• AWS Solutions Architect Professional or DevOps Engineer Professional
• Kong and/or MuleSoft certifications
• Experience with AI/LLM workloads (e.g., AWS Bedrock, RAG, vector databases, agent runtimes, MCP)
• Service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd, Cilium)
• Multi-cloud exposure (Azure / GCP)