Location: Austin, United States of America

This is a hybrid position in Austin, TX

Position Summary

We are seeking an experienced Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate the internal platforms that enable engineering teams to deliver software faster, more securely, and with greater confidence. This role sits at the core of the Thales CDI Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) and is responsible for creating high-quality paved roads across cloud, compute, network, CI/CD, and developer tooling.

The ideal candidate combines deep infrastructure knowledge with a software engineering mindset. They understand that platform engineering is not just about maintaining infrastructure - it is about building a product for developers: self-service, reliable, well-documented, observable, and easy to use.

This is a hands-on technical role based in Austin, Texas, supporting a multi-cloud environment across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Essential Functions

• Platform Engineering
  • Design and build internal platform capabilities that reduce cognitive load for application teams and improve developer productivity
  • Treat infrastructure as a product, focusing on usability, consistency, reliability, and developer experience
  • Create self-service workflows, templates, and reusable components that standardize how teams consume platform services
• Infrastructure Automation
  • Develop automation for cloud foundations, CI/CD, secrets management, container platforms, and network services
  • Build and maintain reusable platform tooling for provisioning, configuration, deployment, and operational tasks
  • Eliminate manual operational work through automation and policy-driven controls
• Cloud & Kubernetes Engineering
  • Support production-grade Kubernetes and multi-cloud landing zones across AWS, GCP, and Azure
  • Contribute to scalable platform patterns for compute, networking, identity, access, and workload deployment
  • Ensure platform components are secure, resilient, and designed for enterprise scale
• Developer Enablement
  • Partner with product engineering teams to understand pain points and deliver practical platform solutions
  • Provide clear documentation, reference architectures, and golden paths for common engineering workflows
  • Improve the developer experience by reducing friction in build, test, deploy, and operate cycles
• Reliability & Operational Excellence
  • Build observability into platform services and ensure they are measurable, supportable, and trustworthy
  • Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement efforts
  • Define and support operational standards that improve reliability, maintainability, and service quality
• Cross-functional Collaboration
  • Collaborate with SRE, Security, Product Owners, and Engineering teams to align platform capabilities with business and technical needs
  • Influence platform strategy through strong technical judgment and clear communication
  • Identify systemic bottlenecks and propose scalable solutions before they impact delivery

Minimum Requirements

• Education
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent professional experience accepted
• Experience
  • Bachelor's degree in field with a minimum of 8-12+ years of relevant work experience or Master's degree in field with 6+ years of relevant work experience
  • 8+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, DevOps, SRE, Infrastructure Engineering, or a related discipline
  • Proven experience building internal platforms, automation frameworks, or developer tooling in a production environment
  • Experience working in multi-cloud and/or enterprise-scale infrastructure environments
• Technical Skills
  • Strong experience with Kubernetes, containerized workloads, and cloud-native architectures
  • Hands-on knowledge of AWS, GCP, and/or Azure
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git-based workflows, and deployment automation
  • Familiarity with secrets management, artifact management, and infrastructure provisioning tools
  • Strong scripting or programming skills for automation and platform development
  • Understanding of observability, reliability, and operational readiness practices
• Soft Skills
  • Product mindset: able to think like a platform user and design with developer experience in mind
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills
  • Able to translate complex infrastructure topics into simple, actionable guidance
  • Comfortable working autonomously in a distributed, collaborative environment
  • Strong ownership, curiosity, and a bias toward simplification and automation

Preferred Qualifications

• Nice to Have
  • Experience with platform engineering patterns such as IDPs, golden paths, self-service portals, and platform APIs
  • Experience in a Cloud Center of Excellence or shared platform organization
  • Familiarity with FinOps, GreenOps, or cloud governance models
  • Exposure to policy-as-code, service catalogs, and internal developer platforms

Travel

• Twice a year minimum

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer at the time of hire. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship or for assuming sponsorship of an employment visa now or in the future.

If you're excited about working with Thales, but not meeting the requirements for this position, we encourage you to join our Talent Community! https://careers.thalesgroup.com/global/en/jointalentcommunity. You can upload your CV and our recruiters can get in touch with any new opportunities that may be of interest to you.

The reference Total Target Compensation (TTC) market range for this position, inclusive of annual base salary and the variable compensation target, is between

Total Target Cash (TTC) 131,781.00 - 219,635.00 USD Annual

This reflects how companies in a similar industry and geographic region generally pay for similar jobs. This range helps the Company make pay decisions as one data point among many. Where a position falls within this range is also dependent on other factors including - but not limited to - the employee's career path history, competencies, skills and performance, as well as the company's annual salary budget, the customer's program requirements, and the company's internal equity. Thales may offer additional benefits and other compensation, depending on circumstances not related to an applicant's status protected by local, state, or federal law.

(For Internal candidate, if you need more information, please raise HR request through MyThales)

Thales provides an extensive benefits program for all full-time employees working 30 or more hours per week and their eligible dependents, including the following:
• Elective Health, Dental, Vision, FSA/HSA, Voluntary Life and AD&D, Whole Group Life w/LTC, Critical Illness, Hospital Indemnity, Accident Insurance, Legal Plan, Identity Theft, and Pet Insurance
• Retirement Savings Plan after 30 days of employment with a company contribution and a match, and with no vesting period
• Company paid holidays and Paid Time Off
• Company provided Life Insurance, AD&D, Disability, Employee Assistance Plan, and Well-being Program