Senior Platform Engineering Lead

Full description

Position Type Permanent Role Family Information Technology Cluster Momentum Corporate Remote Opportunity Some of the time Location - Town / City Centurion / Sandton / Belville Introduction Through our client-facing brands Metropolitan and Momentum, with Multiply (wellness and rewards programme), and our other specialist brands, including Guardrisk and Eris Property Group, the group enables business and people from all walks of life to achieve their financial goals and life aspirations. We help people grow their savings, protect what matters to them and invest for the future. We help companies and organisations care for and reward their employees and members. Through our own network of advisers or via independent brokers and utilising new platforms Momentum Group provides practical financial solutions for people, communities and businesses. Visit us at www.momentumgroupltd.co.za Disclaimer As an applicant, please verify the legitimacy of this job advert on our company career page. Role Purpose The Senior Platform Engineering Lead is accountable for shaping, governing and evolving the platform capabilities that product and engineering teams consume to build, deploy, secure, observe and operate technology solutions at scale. The role translates enterprise technology strategy into platform capabilities, platform guardrails, technicalstandards and platform roadmaps. It provides technical leadership across cloud, developer experience, observability, security enablement and runtime platforms. The role owns the architecture of platform products and the platform-facing compliance envelope. It does not own business solution architecture, application architecture, domain design or detailed software engineering design. The primary objective is to enable engineering teams to deliver safely and rapidly through self-service platforms, automation, reusable capabilities and measurable guardrails. Technology Environment The role operates across: - AWS cloud platforms and landing zones - GitLab CI/CD and DevSecOps tooling - Backstage Developer Portal - Kubernetes and container platforms - Infrastructure as Code platforms - Observability platforms (Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Grafana) - Identity and Access Management platforms - API and Integration platforms - Shared engineering services and platform products - Enterprise architecture standards and technology roadmaps Requirements Minimum Requirements - Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or related discipline. - 10+ years experience across software engineering, cloud engineering, platform engineering or architecture. - 3+ years experience in a senior platform architecture or platform engineering leadership role. - Experience building and operating enterprise-scale cloud platforms. - Experience defining platform standards and engineering guardrails. - Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives. Preferred - Financial Services or Insurance industry experience. - AWS certifications. Duties & Responsibilities Platform Strategy and Roadmap - Define and maintain the platform capability model. - Develop platform target architectures and roadmaps. - Identify technology opportunities and platform improvements. - Guide long-term platform investment decisions. - Support enterprise modernisation initiatives. Outputs - Platform strategy - Platform roadmaps - Platform capability maps - Technology lifecycle plans - Platform investment recommendations Developer Experience - Improve developer productivity through platform capabilities. - Promote self-service engineering practices. - Lead Backstage adoption and evolution. - Support reusable engineering templates and golden paths. Outputs - Platform onboarding journeys - Backstage catalog structures - Self-service capabilities - Engineering accelerators - Golden path guidance Platform Guardrails Define measurable platform guardrails covering: - Security - Operational supportability - Deployability - Observability - Resilience - Compliance - Cost management Focus on automated enforcement wherever possible. Outputs - Platform guardrails - Policy-as-Code controls - Compliance dashboards - Conformance scorecards - Platform standards Technical Leadership - Provide architectural guidance to Platform Engineers. - Facilitate technical decision-making. - Mentor technical leads and engineers. - Lead platform architecture communities and forums. - Resolve cross-platform architectural concerns. Outputs - Platform Architecture reviews - Technical coaching - Platform engineering guidance - Community of practice leadership Operational Excellence - Partner with Production Engineering and SRE teams. - Improve platform resilience and operability. - Ensure observability standards are implemented. - Reduce operational toil through automation. Outputs - Reliability improvements - Operational readiness standards - Platform telemetry standards - Recovery and resilience designs Key Accountabilities The role is accountable for: - Platform architecture strategy - Platform product ownership models - Platform guardrails and standards - Platform reference architectures - Cloud platform architectures - Developer platform architecture - Platform lifecycle management - Platform engineering technical leadership - Platform capability adoption - Platform reliability and resilience The role is not accountable for business solution architecture delivery. Competencies - Platform product management - Cloud architecture - Systems thinking - Architecture leadership - Engineering enablement - Platform governance - Stakeholder management - Cost optimisation - Security enablement - DevOps and Platform Engineering practices