Platform and Cloud Chief Engineer

Overview

The Platform & Cloud Chief Engineer is the senior technical authority for Astrion CORE and the lead hands-on engineer on the team. This role owns the architecture, engineering, and delivery of a cloud-agnostic, modular enterprise platform built on OpenShift and supporting infrastructure. The Chief Engineer defines technical direction, sets engineering standards, and personally builds and integrates platform capabilities across the full stack. The Chief Engineer reports to the CORE Lead / Platform Product Owner and shares matrix oversight of the engineering team with the Lead.

This is not an architecture-only role. The Chief Engineer writes infrastructure-as-code, integrates services, troubleshoots production issues, runs design reviews, and validates every meaningful technical decision the team makes. The Chief Engineer also works directly with Astrion product teams to make sure the solutions and products targeted for CORE can integrate cleanly, meet platform standards, and onboard without rework. On a five-person platform team, the Chief Engineer is both the technical anchor and a daily individual contributor, pairing with the CORE Lead on prioritization and sharing technical direction across the engineering team.

What Makes This Role Different:

Most Chief Engineer titles drift toward pure architecture and oversight. This one does not. You will be in the code, in the cluster, and in the war room. The technical depth of this role is what makes the five-person model work. Astrion is standing up an enterprise platform in fewer than six months, and the math only closes if the senior engineer is also the most productive engineer on the team. If you want to draw boxes and review other people’s work, this is the wrong role. If you want to design the platform and then build it, this is the role.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
• 10+ years in cloud engineering, platform architecture, or infrastructure design.
• Deep hands-on expertise in Kubernetes and OpenShift, including operator development or advanced platform configuration.
• Strong experience with infrastructure automation using Terraform and Ansible.
• Working knowledge of networking, storage, and identity systems in enterprise environments.
• Experience integrating government or regulated IT systems.
• End to End System Integration with V&V
• Disconnected or Air Gapped Infrastructure development and deployment
• Demonstrated ability to write production-grade infrastructure-as-code, not only review it.

Desired Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
• Strong Government Cloud experience (AZURE/AWS/GOOGLE)
• VMware NSX-T or vSphere experience.
• Experience with hardened images and DoD CNAP environments.
• Strong experience with hardware associated with running cloud environments
• Experience operating under cATO or FedRAMP High.
• Familiarity with GitOps patterns using Argo CD or Flux.
• Classified experience with government infrastructure at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain the CORE reference architecture across cloud, on-premises, and edge deployments.
• Lead platform engineering for OpenShift, Kubernetes, and supporting infrastructure components.
• Establish landing zone patterns, environment baselines, and provisioning standards.
• Integrate networking, storage, identity, and security components into a unified platform.
• Define platform services, shared capabilities, and onboarding interfaces for solution teams.
• Own infrastructure-as-code design and implementation using Terraform and Ansible Automation Platform.
• Drive platform scalability, resilience, and performance against defined KPIs.
• Run design reviews and enforce architecture governance across the team.
• Build and integrate DevSecOps capabilities in partnership with the DevSecOps & Automation Engineer.
• Partner with the Network Engineer on segmentation, routing, and Zero Trust integration.
• Technical Roadmap Development
• Mentor team members on engineering practice, code quality, and platform standards.

Core Competencies

• Hands-on platform engineering across the full stack.
• Architectural judgment under real-world constraints.
• Code quality and engineering discipline.
• Mentorship without bottlenecking.
• Technical communication across audiences from operator to executive.