Principal Platform Engineer -Infrastructure Automation & Agentic Engineering

Principal Platform Engineer

The Principal Platform Engineer is an enterprise-level individual contributor within the Technology Infrastructure Hosting team. The role shapes hosting-platform vision, strategy, roadmaps, governance, priorities, investment recommendations, and delivery outcomes for complex, business-critical initiatives across multiple teams and systems. It develops reusable modules, golden paths, self-service capabilities, engineering standards, evaluation methods, and operational controls across Windows Server, Active Directory and identity integrations; AIX/POWER and Linux; VMware, Nutanix, Hyper-V and related compute; storage, backup, SAN and NAS; middleware; networking and firewalls; Datadog, Nagios and related observability; ServiceNow CMDB, ITSM and workflow integrations; and adjacent infrastructure services. The engineer remains hands-on with code and production systems and converts approved designs, domain standards, runbooks, lifecycle obligations, and recurring work into secure, scalable, reliable, cost-effective, and version-controlled capabilities using IaC, configuration management, CI/CD, deterministic orchestration, and governed AI where it adds value.

This role operates with broad decision-impacting opportunities over platform engineering priorities and outcomes without direct people-management responsibility. It aligns senior leaders and cross-functional stakeholders, establishes governance for consistent delivery, coaches senior technical leaders and engineers, resolves systemic cross-domain problems, and challenges unsupported completion claims with evidence. Engineering-whether manual, scripted, IaC-based, or AI-assisted-must improve scalability, developer and operator experience, reliability, security, lifecycle currency, recoverability, observability, auditability, service and financial outcomes.

Our flexible/hybrid work schedule includes 3 in-person days in our Salisbury, NC office and 2 remote days. Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.

Core Responsibilities

• Platform strategy and roadmap.
• Governance and portfolio leadership.
• Cross-domain platform engineering.
• Platform product and experience management.
• Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD.
• Runbook-to-automation engineering.
• Generative and Agentic AI for operations.
• Prompt and context engineering.
• Agent harnesses and orchestration.
• Continuous agentic improvement.
• Evaluation and quality engineering.
• Financial and capacity stewardship.
• Security, risk, and compliance by design.
• Reliability and observability.
• Platform lifecycle and resilience.
• Basis Engineering and Definition of Done.
• Technical leadership and organizational capability.

Required Infrastructure Domain Breadth

Windows and identity

Windows Server lifecycle, Active Directory/GPO, DNS, privileged access, patching, configuration baselines, hybrid identity dependencies, PowerShell/DSC and recovery.

AIX and Linux

AIX/POWER, HMC/PowerVM/NIM, RHEL or equivalent Linux, package and kernel lifecycle, SSH/PAM/sudo, Ansible, filesystem and multipath dependencies, patching and recovery.

Compute and virtualization

VMware vSphere/vCenter/ESXi, Nutanix AOS/Prism, Hyper-V or comparable platforms; capacity, firmware/compatibility, cluster resilience, migration, lifecycle and automation.

Storage, backup and SAN

Block/file/storage services, Fibre Channel zoning and multipath, SAN/NAS lifecycle, backup policy, immutable protection, capacity, replication and tested restore or failover.

Middleware and runtime

Application servers, web tiers, messaging, integration runtimes or comparable middleware; configuration, certificates, dependencies, patching, HA, logging and performance.

Networking and firewalls

IP/DNS/load-balancing dependencies, routing, segmentation, firewall policy, ports and protocols, network change validation, telemetry and rollback coordination.

Observability

Datadog, Nagios or comparable platforms; coverage, tagging, service checks, metrics/logs/traces, SLI/SLO, actionable alerts, dependency suppression, synthetic health and evidence retention.

Service management

ServiceNow CMDB/Discovery, CI identification and reconciliation, completeness/correctness/compliance, service mapping, catalog/workflow, change, incident, problem and knowledge integration.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive infrastructure, platform, site reliability, or infrastructure software engineering experience, including principal-level ownership of complex cross-platform outcomes in large enterprise production environments.
• Demonstrated production experience across at least four hosting-domain groups-Windows/AD; AIX/Linux; VMware/Nutanix/Hyper-V; storage/backup/SAN; middleware; networking/firewalls; observability; and ServiceNow-with deep hands-on expertise in at least two.
• Hands-on ability to design, code, test, deploy and operate production automation using Python and at least two of PowerShell, Ansible, Terraform/OpenTofu, ARM/Bicep, shell scripting or comparable technologies.
• Demonstrated experience applying Generative AI to engineering or operational workflows, including prompt engineering, context management, structured outputs, retrieval grounding, tool calling, and evaluation.
• Direct experience designing or operating agentic workflows or autonomous/semi-autonomous systems with tool integration, state/memory, human approvals, observability, bounded execution, and failure recovery.
• Experience creating evaluation harnesses, regression suites, test datasets, red-team cases, and measurable release gates for AI-enabled workflows.
• Expert ability to define platform strategy and roadmaps, establish governance, lead complex multi-team initiatives, and align senior business and technology stakeholders around priorities and measurable outcomes.
• Working mastery of Lean-Agile or SAFe principles, platform product management, business analysis, experience design, user stories, estimation, planning, dependency management, and incremental delivery.
• Demonstrated financial analysis and FinOps capability, including demand and capacity forecasting, unit-cost and consumption analysis, cost allocation, licensing and vendor trade-offs, optimization, and benefits realization.
• Strong knowledge of platform resource provisioning and configuration, CMDB and service mapping, patch and update management, incident/change/problem management, monitoring and logging, lifecycle and capacity management, documentation and reporting, security administration, backup, disaster recovery, high availability, runbook engineering, and production support.
• Ability to translate ambiguous operational problems and approved direction into reusable engineering products, measurable outcomes, implementation patterns, and clear technical standards.
• Proven ability to influence senior engineers, suppliers, technical stakeholders, and leaders and to challenge design assumptions through implementation evidence.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrable experience.
• Able to work in the office a minimum of 3 days per week including every Tuesday, and Wednesday (excluding holidays & paid time off).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience engineering and automating hybrid hosting estates spanning enterprise data centers, retail or edge compute, cloud, managed-service delivery, and multiple supplier boundaries.
• Experience with Microsoft Agent Framework, Azure AI/Foundry agent services, Semantic Kernel, LangGraph, or comparable orchestration frameworks.
• Experience integrating ServiceNow CMDB, Discovery, service mapping, catalog/workflow, change, incident and knowledge processes with source control, IaC, observability and operational automation.
• Experience with container platforms, Kubernetes, GitOps, golden paths, platform engineering, software supply-chain security, and artifact provenance.
• Familiarity with NIST AI RMF and the Generative AI Profile, CIS Benchmarks, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, zero trust, PCI-related controls, and regulated enterprise environments.
• Experience building self-service infrastructure products used by multiple engineering teams.
• Published technical writing, implementation guidance, open-source contributions, conference participation, or a sustained technical community presence.
• Relevant advanced certifications or directly equivalent demonstrated depth in Microsoft/Windows, Red Hat or IBM AIX, VMware, Nutanix, storage/SAN, networking/security, ServiceNow, observability, cloud, DevOps, Kubernetes or Terraform.

Salary Range:

$163,280 - $244