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Salary: USD 255,000 - 280,000 / annual
Shift5 delivers operational intelligence for onboard OT (operational technology) across defense, aerospace, and commercial transportation fleets. The company captures and analyzes databus data to detect anomalies, predict failures, and secure critical infrastructure against cyber threats.
The Platform Engineering team owns four core capabilities: Operating Systems (BaseOS, Manifold, Yocto), Cloud & Infrastructure (AWS/GovCloud to edge), Developer Experience (CI/CD guardrails, internal tooling), and AI Enablement (secure AI orchestration and tooling).
As Principal Platform Engineer, you will be the senior-most individual contributor on the team, serving as the primary technical anchor for architecture and a key multiplier for the engineering organization. You will drive overall technical strategy, mentor senior engineers, and step into direct team leadership or people management as needed.
Key responsibilities include:
• Release Engineering & Delivery Backbone: Architect and operate end-to-end release infrastructure (Lunar) and GitOps delivery pipelines using ArgoCD, EKS, GitHub Enterprise, and GitHub Actions.
• Supply Chain Security & Compliance: Lead artifact security (Harbor, Cosign, Vault Transit Engine) and build automated, compliance-by-default pipelines (NIST controls, SBOM generation) to eliminate program friction.
• OS Lifecycle & AI Enablement: Support hardware OS image builds (Yocto, Manifold) and productionize internal AI gateways, RAG tooling, and developer AI workflows (Cursor).
• Technical & Team Leadership: Author RFCs/design docs, run architecture reviews, plan roadmaps, and mentor mid/staff-level engineers. Provide direct management (1:1s, hiring, performance reviews) during transitions or scale.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with security, embedded, and field teams to ensure seamless delivery across airgapped and edge environments.
Success metrics include: predictable, seamless release engineering trusted across teams; automated compliance evidence and SBOMs generated natively in CI/CD; securely integrated and actively adopted AI tooling; and elevated engineering standards across the organization with clear priorities and resilient team leadership.
REQUIREMENTS:
Required:
• 10+ years in software/platform engineering, with 5+ years managing production infrastructure at scale
• Technical & People Leadership: Proven track record leading projects, designing architecture, mentoring engineers, and readiness (or prior experience) for direct people management
• Cloud & Modern Delivery: Hands-on mastery of Kubernetes, ArgoCD, GitHub Actions/Earthly, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/OpenTofu, AWS/GovCloud)
• Supply Chain Security: Strong background in artifact registries, container signing (Cosign/Sigstore), Vault, and SBOM generation
• Clearance: Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Security Clearance (U.S. Citizenship required)
Preferred:
• Background in defense, aerospace, or regulated environments (NIST 800-53, IL4/IL5, CMMC)
• Embedded Linux/OS experience (Yocto, SLE Micro) and airgapped/edge deployment models
• Experience deploying internal AI/LLM infrastructure (RAG, model gateways, governance)
• Scripting proficiency in Go, Python, and Bash
