Principal DevOps Engineer

🇵🇱Remote - Krakow, Poland4w ago

K-12 Engineering Devops Cloud Computing Software Engineering Infrastructure Kubernetes

Role Snapshot

Principal DevOps Engineer serving as a technical leader within TurnItIn's DevOps organization, translating strategic platform direction into reliable, scalable, and developer-friendly infrastructure capabilities. This is a hands-on leadership role focused on designing and implementing platform capabilities across serverless and Kubernetes environments while guiding senior engineers and influencing engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities: Design and implement platform capabilities across serverless AWS workloads and Kubernetes (EKS) environments; drive systemic reliability improvements and strengthen observability standards; lead technical execution of platform initiatives including CI/CD automation, deployment workflows, and cluster design evolution. Mentor senior engineers, establish golden paths for deployment and monitoring, and elevate engineering standards through technical discussions and design reviews.

Skills & Tools: Expert-level proficiency in AWS serverless architecture, Kubernetes (EKS), CI/CD automation, and infrastructure-as-code; strong understanding of SRE principles, observability (logging, metrics, tracing), and deployment safety practices. Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers, communicate technical tradeoffs clearly, and influence cross-team engineering practices with both hands-on technical execution and strategic leadership capabilities.

Qualifications: Extensive experience as a senior DevOps/Platform engineer or similar role with proven track record leading platform engineering initiatives at scale; deep technical expertise in cloud-native architectures, containerization, and modern deployment practices. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field (or equivalent professional experience) with evidence of mentoring and influencing engineering practices across multiple teams.

Location: Remote - Krakow, Poland

Compensation: Not provided by employer. Typical compensation for this role is €90,000 – €130,000/year based on title, seniority, and location.

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Job Description

We are seeking a Principal DevOps Engineer to serve as a technical leader within our DevOps organization.

This role partners closely with other senior technical leaders to translate strategic platform direction into reliable, scalable, and developer-friendly infrastructure capabilities. The Principal will lead the technical execution of platform initiatives, elevate engineering standards, and drive measurable improvements in reliability, cost efficiency, and delivery velocity.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will design and implement platform capabilities across our serverless and Kubernetes environments, guide senior engineers, and influence engineering practices across teams.

Key Responsibilities and Outputs:

Technical Leadership & Execution

Partner with Architects to implement and operationalize platform strategy.
Lead the technical design and delivery of platform capabilities across:
- Serverless-first AWS workloads
- Kubernetes (EKS) environments
Break down large architectural initiatives into executable milestones.
Guide platform implementation patterns and reusable modules.

Reliability & Operational Improvement

Drive systemic improvements that reduce incident frequency and severity.
Strengthen observability standards (logging, metrics, tracing).
Support adoption of Product focused SRE frameworks across teams.
Improve deployment safety, change management, and incident response practices.

Platform Evolution

Improve CI/CD automation and deployment workflows.
Contribute to Kubernetes cluster design evolution and networking patterns.
Improve logging pipelines, cost visibility, tagging standards, and platform guardrails.
Support platform modernization efforts with a focus on simplification and predictability.

Engineering Enablement

Improve developer experience across platform offerings.
Establish clear golden paths for deployment and monitoring.
Contribute to DORA metric visibility and engineering performance improvements.
Support responsible AI tooling adoption in our workflows.

Influence & Mentorship

Mentor senior engineers and elevate platform engineering standards.
Lead technical discussions and design reviews.
Make tradeoffs visible and articulate technical risk clearly.
Reinforce disciplined intake and prioritization practices to protect strategic capacity.