Platform Engineer

Platform Engineering improves developer experience and accelerates delivery across Xceptor by providing internal platform capabilities, golden paths, and self-service tooling. 
We enable tribes to move fast safely through strong standards, automation, and high-quality foundations across cloud and on-prem deployments.  Xceptor operates with an AI-first PDLC. AI agents accelerate how we design, build, test, document, and operate platform capabilities, with humans providing intent, constraints, verification, and accountability. 

As a Senior Platform Engineer at Xceptor, you build and evolve the internal platform that enables teams to ship production-grade software quickly, consistently, and safely. You create the paved road for delivery: templates and scaffolds, CI/CD foundations, environment provisioning, security and compliance guardrails, observability defaults, and self-service workflows that remove friction. 

This is an AI-first platform role. You use AI daily to accelerate platform delivery, including scaffolds, pipeline definitions, infrastructure as code, policy as code, documentation, diagnostics, and migration templates. Agents can draft; you verify, harden, and operationalise so the platform becomes more reliable and easier to use over time. 

This role exists to make high-velocity delivery repeatable and safe across Xceptor by making the right thing easy: fast local development, safe CI/CD, consistent environments, robust guardrails, and high-signal operational tooling. 

• Build and maintain “golden paths” for engineers: repo templates, service scaffolds, standard CI pipelines, and common delivery patterns.
• Make the right thing the easy thing: reduce setup time, lower cognitive load, and improve the end-to-end developer workflow.
• Define and maintain platform standards that enable speed without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Partner with tribes to understand friction points and continuously improve developer experience based on evidence.

Platform Capabilities & Self Service:

• Build internal platform services and tooling that provide self-service capabilities (provisioning, configuration, secrets, environments, diagnostics).
• Enable consistent cloud and on-prem delivery paths where required, with clear abstraction and documented operational constraints.
• Improve environment parity and “works the same everywhere” behaviors through standardisation and automation.
• Provide reliable internal APIs, tools, and documentation that teams can depend on.

• Build and evolve CI/CD foundations: pipeline templates, build/test gates, artifact versioning, release orchestration, and safe rollout/rollback practices.
• Automate repetitive delivery tasks (scaffolding, configuration generation, validation checks, release notes) to reduce toil.
• Ensure platform tooling integrates naturally with engineering workflows and encourages small PRs and frequent releases.
• Collaborate with SRE to embed reliability and operational readiness into delivery pipelines.

• Embed security and compliance guardrails into the platform: dependency scanning, policy-as-code where appropriate, secure defaults, and least-privilege patterns.
• Ensure platform workflows support auditability and traceability suitable for regulated customers.
• Partner with Security and Engineering to balance control with speed, ensuring guardrails are automated and low-friction.

• Provide standard observability defaults in templates and pipelines: structured logging, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerting hooks.
• Improve the quality and consistency of operational signals available to teams, reducing “unknown unknowns” in production.
• Partner with SRE and QA so developer workflows and production signals align (build confidence before release).

• Uses AI routinely to accelerate platform delivery: drafting scaffolds, pipelines, IaC, policies, docs, and diagnostics, with rigorous verification.
• Establishes “agents draft, humans verify” as the normal way of working for platform artefacts, with clear standards and review expectations.
• Builds team-level leverage through “golden prompts”, templates, and automated checks that make fast delivery repeatable for all tribes.
• Continuously improves platform capabilities using feedback loops: adoption data, developer friction signals, incident learnings, and time-to-ship metrics.

• Works closely with engineering teams and leadership to identify where the platform can remove friction and improve delivery speed.
• Coaches teams in using the platform effectively, and incorporates feedback to improve usability and adoption.
• Collaborates across Platform Engineering, SRE, QA, and Security to align standards and avoid conflicting guidance.
• Contributes to a culture of high standards, high tempo, and pragmatic innovation.

• Strong experience building internal platform tooling and/or operating shared delivery systems in modern engineering organisations.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, release engineering, and automation principles (pipeline templates, gates, artifact management, rollout/rollback).
• Familiarity with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration tooling
• Experience with GitOps principals of deployment
• Experience with scripting and coding languages (e.g. bash, powershell, python, Go, C#, Java)
• Experience with developer portals (e.g. Port, Backstage)
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and environment automation (e.g. terraform, github actions, azure devops)
• Strong cloud and cloud-native fundamentals (Azure preferred) and understanding of operational constraints across environments (including on-prem where applicable).
• Comfortable designing developer-focused APIs/tools with usability, reliability, and maintainability in mind.
• Strong troubleshooting and systems thinking across build, deploy, runtime, and developer workflows.

• Uses AI routinely to accelerate platform outcomes (scaffolds, pipelines, IaC, docs, diagnostics) and validates outputs before adoption.
• Able to build repeatable workflows that improve delivery speed and quality for entire teams, not just personal productivity.
• Understands AI risks (unsafe automation, false confidence, security/privacy) and applies disciplined verification and controls.

• Strong stakeholder and relationship management skills; can influence across teams without authority.
• Pragmatic, outcome-driven problem solver with a bias for automation and evidence-based improvement.
• Clear communicator; able to translate developer needs into platform capabilities and adoption.
• Customer- and control-aware mindset suited to regulated, mission-critical environments.

• Significant experience as a Platform Engineer / DevOps Engineer / Infrastructure Engineer / Software Engineer in a platform capacity (typically 5+ years; adjust per your framework).
• Experience building CI/CD foundations, automation tooling, and developer experience improvements in production environments.
• Experience with cloud services and IaC; Azure experience beneficial.
• Strong academic background, including a degree in a STEM subject discipline, or equivalent experience.

This role is measured on outcomes and how they’re achieved: developer speed, production-grade safety, and controlled change enabled through an AI-first platform.

• Developer experience: measurable reduction in shipping friction; improved Developer Experience Score; faster onboarding and “time to first PR”
• Adoption: golden path usage increases; deviations are intentional and justified; platform tools are used because they help
• Flow impact: improved DORA metrics driven by better pipelines, templates, and automation (lead time down, deploy frequency up, change failure rate down)
• Assurance & controls: automated gates coverage increases; secure defaults and traceability are consistently applied
• Reliability enablement: operational readiness improves (observability defaults adopted; fewer avoidable incidents caused by platform gaps)
• Behaviours: AI-first by default (agents draft, humans verify); enablement mindset; system-level thinking; continuous improvement loops; control-aware decisions

Associated Values and Behaviours

• • Collaboration: Encourage teamwork and knowledge sharing.
  • Innovation: Support the exploration of new ideas and technologies.
  • Integrity: Maintain transparency and ethical behavior in all decisions.
  • Accountability: Take ownership of responsibilities and results.
  • Respect: Value diverse perspectives and contributions.
  • Continuous Improvement: Strive for excellence in processes and outcomes.
  • Customer Focus: Prioritize solutions that meet or exceed customer expectations.
  • Drives continuous learning, personally and across the organisation, embracing modern practices including AI-enabled delivery

We believe great ideas come from everywhere — and that the best teams are made up of people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. At Xceptor, we’re committed to building a workplace where everyone feels welcome, valued, and empowered to be themselves.

We know that not everyone ticks every single box in a job description — and that’s okay. If you’re excited about this role and think you could make a difference, we’d love to hear from you. Your unique skills and experiences might be just what we need, even if you don’t meet every requirement.

We celebrate diversity and are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment for all employees — regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or background.

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