Senior Principal Platform Engineer – Connected Aviation

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Washington.

📋 Description

• Oversee key projects and coordination within the Aviation Intelligence department.

• Provide support to the Ascentia and FlightAware teams concentrating on AI/ML initiatives, data science, and data management.

• Take ownership of and enhance AWS infrastructure that supports data platforms, ML training, and analytics workloads.

• Design, implement, and maintain services based on EKS and Kubernetes workloads.

• Construct and manage Terraform infrastructure across development, staging, and production environments.

• Create and sustain CI/CD pipelines for both infrastructure and application deployment.

• Manage and enhance Kafka/Redpanda clusters.

• Enhance the reliability, observability, and performance of prediction services.

• Support Dagster for orchestrating data workflows.

• Collaborate with Data Science, ML Engineering, and Data Engineering to productionize models and data pipelines.

• Strengthen AWS IAM, networking, and connectivity between cloud and on-premises systems.

• Assist in cyber hardening efforts alongside the RTX cyber team.

• Identify and systematically improve existing infrastructure and deployment methodologies.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) with a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience, or an Advanced Degree in a related field with at least 7 years of experience.

• Proficient in Python.

• Extensive experience with AWS, including EKS, IAM, VPCs, and networking.

• Practical experience with Kubernetes in managing production workloads.

• Experience in managing Kafka or Redpanda in production settings.

• Expertise in Terraform for infrastructure as code.

• Experience in building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines utilizing GitLab, GitHub Actions, or similar tools.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, reliability, and scalability.

• Experience in supporting production data pipelines or ML systems.

• Familiarity with observability stacks such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Thanos.

• Experience with Kafka Connect is preferred.

• Familiarity with Rust or a willingness to learn it is preferred.

• Experience with Dagster, Airflow, or other contemporary ETL orchestration tools is preferred.

• Background in supporting ML/AI systems in production (MLOps) is preferred.

• Experience in optimizing infrastructure for performance and cost is preferred.

• Familiarity with Iceberg, Spark, Elasticsearch, and other large-scale data processing systems is preferred.

• Experience working in hybrid infrastructure environments is preferred.

• Must have authorization to work in the U.S. without company immigration sponsorship, now or in the future.

• No security clearance is required.

🏝️ Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• Three weeks of vacation for newly hired employees.

• Generous 401(k) plan with employer matching funds and separate employer retirement contribution.

• Lifetime Income Strategy option.

• Tuition reimbursement program.

• Student Loan Repayment Program.

• Life insurance and disability coverage.

• Optional pet insurance.

• Optional home and auto insurance.

• Optional additional life and accident insurance.

• Optional critical illness insurance.

• Optional group legal coverage.

• Optional ID theft protection.

• Birth, adoption, and parental leave benefits.

• Ovia Health, fertility, and family planning services.

• Adoption Assistance.

• Autism Benefit.

• Employee Assistance Plan, providing up to 10 free counseling sessions.

• Healthy You Incentives wellness rewards program.

• Doctor on Demand for virtual doctor visits.

• Bright Horizons child and elder care services.

• Teladoc Medical Experts second opinion program.

• Flexible work schedules.

• Employee Scholar Program.

• Paid time off and holidays.

• Annual short-term and/or long-term incentive compensation programs may be available.