Staff Platform Engineer (Hands-on, IDP, K8)

Why this role matters:

As a Staff Platform Engineer, you are a key technical leader for our India-based engineering team, acting as a bridge between high-level architectural vision and world-class execution. Working closely with Senior Management and the Global Architecture team, you will help shape Vonage’s engineering culture. You will drive the implementation of our long-term technical roadmap for our Cloud-Native Kubernetes platform, ensuring our global production APIs remain resilient, cost-efficient, and secure. Your mission is to eliminate systemic friction through software engineering, ensuring a seamless experience for hundreds of developers interacting with the cloud.

Your key responsibilities:

• Collaborative Technical Leadership: Work in partnership with the architecture team to scope, size, and execute large-scale initiatives. You serve as a primary technical authority and escalation point for the team in India.
• Predictive Problem Solving: Use deep systems knowledge to foresee architectural bottlenecks. You proactively design solutions for future scale, ensuring the platform stays ahead of business demands.
• Mentorship & Multiplier: Act as a lead mentor for junior and senior engineers. You provide the guidance needed to raise the engineering bar, fostering a culture of technical excellence and self-sufficiency.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Culture: Drive the evolution of our IaC practices using tools like Terraform and Crossplane, moving the organization toward a Kubernetes-native management style.
• Reliability & Systems Debugging: Respond effectively to service failures by diving into AWS/EKS, Linux, and ArgoCD. Lead the team in performing thorough, blame-free Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
• CI/CD Modernization: Support the transition from legacy systems to modern automation. While expertise in GitHub Actions and enterprise-grade workflows is highly valued, your primary goal is ensuring a robust and automated deployment pipeline.

What you'll bring

• Experience: 12+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, systems design, and cloud architecture.
• AWS & Kubernetes Excellence: Expert-level experience managing massive, high-traffic, multi-tenant Kubernetes environments specifically on AWS (EKS).
• Cloud-Native Proficiency: Deep understanding of the AWS ecosystem, including networking, storage, and security layers.
• Observability Architecture: Experience implementing and managing observability stacks using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, VictoriaMetrics, or Thanos.
• FinOps & Efficiency: A proven track record of optimizing cluster topologies to balance performance with cost-efficiency goals.

What's required for application

• CI/CD Transformation: Experience migrating from Jenkins to GitHub Actions (custom actions, API integration, and self-hosted runners).
• Coding & Automation: Proficiency in Go (preferred) or Python to build integrated bot solutions and automation tools.
• Governance: Experience managing Harbor or Artifactory lifecycles.

How you’ll benefit:

• Attractive Discretionary Time Off
• Private Medical Insurance with optional dependent coverage
• Educational Assistance Reimbursement Program
• Opportunities for reimbursement for conferences, trainings, and other personal development events
• Maternity and Paternity Leave
• Ask recruiter for country specific information

Note: The purpose of this profile is to provide a general summary of essential responsibilities for the position and is not meant as an exhaustive list. Assignments may differ for individuals within the same role based on business conditions, departmental need or geographic location.