Purpose
Platform Engineering is the practice of designing, building and operating platforms for application engineering teams to leverage. The main goal of the central platform engineering team is to unlock the potential of the application teams so they spend more time focusing on business functionality, increasing velocity and reducing time to market. Moreover, the enterprise can better scale across its applications with similar platforms and shared microservices, making it easier to staff engineer assignments, as well as access enterprise information.
Because of its holistic charter, the Platform Engineering team requires both infrastructure and development skillsets, people who can architect and design services, and people who can build and run them. Because services are provided for their full lifecycle – and must continuously improve to meet new requirements and priorities the team must manage its services like a product portfolio, support the DevOps transformation of the company, drive the application engineering community and to share and incorporate new concepts and technologies.
Key Responsibilities
Advice, Guidance & Technical planning
Consultancy
* Takes responsibility for understanding client requirements, collecting data, delivering analysis and problem resolution.
* Identifies, evaluates and recommends options, implementing if required.
* Collaborates with, and facilitates stakeholder groups, as part of formal or informal consultancy agreements.
* Seeks to fully address client needs, enhancing the capabilities and effectiveness of client personnel, by ensuring that proposed solutions are properly understood and appropriately exploited.
Technical Specialism
* Maintains an in-depth knowledge of specific specialisms, and provides expert advice regarding their application. Can supervise specialist consultancy. The specialism can be any aspect of information or communication technology, technique, method, product or application area.
Emerging Technology Monitoring
* Monitors the market to gain knowledge and understanding of currently emerging technologies.
* Identifies new and emerging hardware and software technologies and products based on own area of expertise, assesses their relevance and potential value to the organisation, contributes to briefings of staff and management.
Systems Development & Integration
* Systems Development Management
* Defines solution development projects which support the organisation's objectives and plans.
* Ensures that senior management is both aware of and able to provide the required resources.
* Contributes effectively to improving solution development processes within the organisation justified by measurable business benefits.
* Facilitates availability and optimum utilisation of resources, especially in Agile projects.
* Monitors and reports on the progress of development projects, ensuring that projects are carried out in accordance with agreed standards, methods and procedures (including secure software development).
* Applies secure development improvement practices.
Systems Design
* Specifies and designs large or complex systems.
* Selects appropriate design standards, methods and tools, consistent with agreed enterprise and solution architectures and ensures they are applied effectively.
* Reviews others' systems designs to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources, and integration of multiple systems and technology.
* Contributes to policy for selection of architecture components.
* Evaluates and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and assesses and manages associated risks.
* Ensures that the system design balances functional, service quality, security and systems management requirements.
Database Design
* Maintains and applies up to date, specialist knowledge of database concepts, object and data modelling techniques and design principles, and a detailed knowledge of the full range of database architectures, software and facilities available.
* Analyses data requirements, to establish, modify or maintain a data model.
* Takes account of specialist requirements (e.g. geocoding, for geographic information systems).
* Interprets the model into an appropriate database schema within set policies.
* Demonstrates, installs and commissions selected products.
Programming / Software Engineering
* Sets local or team-based standards for programming tools and techniques, integrating security guidelines, and the selection of appropriate development methods.
* Advises on application of standards and methods and ensures compliance.
* Takes technical responsibility for all stages and/or iterations in a software development project, providing method specific technical advice and guidance to project stakeholders.
* Assigns work packages, monitors performance and manages change control dynamically, to optimise productivity.
* Provides advice, guidance and assistance to less experienced colleagues as required.
Testing
* Coordinates and manages planning of the system and/or acceptance tests, including software security testing, within a development or integration project or programme.
* Takes responsibility for integrity of testing and acceptance activities and coordinates the execution of these activities.
* Provides authoritative advice and guidance on any aspect of test planning and execution.
* Manages all test processes, including test plans, resources, costs, timescales, test deliverables and traceability.
* Identifies process improvements, and contributes to corporate testing standards and definition of best practice.
Systems Integration
* Designs and builds integration components and interfaces.
* Leads practical integration work under the technical direction of the system /service designer.
* May contribute to the overall design of the service.
* May define the technical criteria for product/component selection.
* Contributes to decisions about tools, methods and approaches.
Porting / Software Configuration
* Leads a team, providing expert technical knowledge in the systems testing of platform-specific versions of the software products, on varying platforms.
* Provides specialist guidance information to support, systems testing and quality assurance functions to assist in improving procedures.
Service Design, Transition & Operations
* Availability Management
* Provides advice, assistance and leadership associated with the planning, design and improvement of service and component availability, including the investigation of all breaches of availability targets and service non-availability, with the instigation of remedial activities.
* Plans arrangements for disaster recovery together with supporting processes and manages the testing of such plans.
Service Level Management
* Ensures that service delivery meets agreed service levels.
* Creates and maintains a catalogue of available services.
* In consultation with the customer negotiates service level requirements and agrees service levels.
* Diagnoses service delivery problems and initiates actions to maintain or improve levels of service.
* Establishes and maintains operational methods, procedures and facilities in assigned area of responsibility and reviews them regularly for effectiveness and efficiency.
Release and Deployment
* Leads the assessment, analysis, planning and design of release packages, including assessment of risk.
* Liaises with business and IT partners on release scheduling and communication of progress.
* Conducts post release reviews.
* Ensures release processes and procedures are applied.
Capacity Management
* Drafts and maintains standards and procedures for service component capacity management.
* Ensures the correct implementation of standards and procedures.
* Pro-actively reviews information in conjunction with service level agreements to identify any capacity issues and specifies any required changes.
* Works with business users to agree and implement short and medium term modifications to demand.
Stakeholder & People Management
Relationship Management
* Identifies the communications needs of each stakeholder group in conjunction with business owners and subject matter experts.
* Translates communications / stakeholder engagement strategies into specific tasks.
* Facilitates open communication and discussion between stakeholders, acting as a single point of contact by developing, maintaining and working to stakeholder engagement strategies and plans.
* Negotiates with stakeholders at senior levels, ensuring that organisational policy and strategies are adhered to.
* Provides informed feedback to assess and promote understanding.
People Management
* Build the appropriate structure to be able to manage the respective organization effectively, identify and develop the future talents and create realistic succession scenarios for key positions
* Ensure appropriate leadership skills are present at every level by creating a motivational and supportive work environment in which employees are coached, trained and provided with career opportunities through development
* Allocate the different projects/programs and work streams to the respective teams and employees considering experience, project complexity, workload and organizational efficiency
* Continuously monitor and evaluate team workload and organizational efficiency with the support of IT systems, data and analysis and team feedback and make appropriate changes in order to meet business needs.
* Provide team members/direct reports with clear direction and targets that are aligned with business needs and GIT objectives
Key Relationships
* Enterprise-, Domain- and Solution Architects
* (Senior) Directors of Software Engineering & Operations and their teams
* (Senior) Directors of IT Infrastructure & IT Security and their teams
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
1. Ability to directly and successfully lead, mentor and develop a talented team of high-performing individuals in a fast-paced environment
2. Proven skill in understanding market and technology trends, and customer needs and developing product strategy and aligning product plans built directly from customer input
3. Technically strong with significant experience in software engineering and architecture, cloud based infrastructure, infrastructure automation and continuous delivery platforms
4. Experience in technical operations of high volume distributed applications
5. English language (fluent)
6. Acquiring understanding of the underlying issues in complex problems or situations by correctly relating these to simpler or better understood concepts, models or previous experiences.
7. Making decisions at the appropriate time, taking into account the needs of the situation, priorities, constraints and the availability of necessary information.
8. Understanding the needs, objectives and constraints of those in other disciplines and functions.
9. Working co-operatively (rather than competitively) with others to achieve a common goal.
Qualifications
1. 8+ years’ experience in Software Engineering
2. 4+ years’ experience in Technical / Software Architecture
3. 3+ years’ experience in team management and development