Junior Platform Engineer job description

Platform and DevOps — Junior Platform Engineer
Runs pipelines and infrastructure tasks under close guidance.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Cloud Infrastructure
- Cloud Landing Zone Design — You can find your way around an existing landing zone, locate the account or project a workload belongs in, and follow the paved path to deploy into it.
- Infrastructure Provisioning Automation — You can write a small module from a written requirement, following the team conventions, and get it through review without major rework.
- Network and Cloud Security Configuration — You can read a network diagram and a security group configuration and explain which traffic is allowed and why.
- Secrets and Credential Rotation — You can rotate a routine credential following the runbook, and update every place that consumes it without causing an outage.
- Disaster Recovery and Backup Planning — You can run a documented restore of a single system from backup, and confirm the restored data is what was expected.
- Infrastructure Vulnerability and Patch Management — You can triage a vulnerability scan, tell which findings are exploitable in your environment, and schedule the patch without being told to.

CI/CD and Delivery
- CI Pipeline Engineering — You can build a pipeline for a straightforward service from the templates your team already uses, and keep it green. You track down flaky tests and slow steps rather than re-running the build until it passes.
- Release Automation and Deployment Strategy — You can run a release using the documented steps and watch the agreed dashboards afterwards. You know how to trigger the rollback, and you ask before deviating from the runbook.
- Artifact and Package Registry Management — You can publish a build artifact to the registry using the pipeline steps already written, and find a published version again by its tag or digest. Someone reviews changes you make to how publishing works.
- Environment and Configuration Management — You can add an environment or a service configuration using the infrastructure-as-code patterns your team follows, and keep secrets out of the repository. You notice when staging has drifted from production and say so.

Container Platform
- Container Orchestration — You can deploy a workload using an existing manifest or chart, and check its pods or containers are running and healthy.
- Container Image Build and Hardening — You can use multi-stage builds and slim base images to cut an image down, and you clear the scanner findings against images you own. You run the process as a non-root user because that is the standard here.
- Service Mesh Operations — You can read the mesh configuration for a service and explain what traffic it allows. You apply a policy someone else has written and confirm the sidecar picked it up, with a reviewer checking your change.

SRE and Reliability
- On-Call Incident Command — You can follow the runbook for a known alert, and page the right person when the runbook does not cover what you are seeing.
- Service Level Objective Management — You can read a service's SLO and error budget dashboard and say whether it is currently within budget.
- Alert Design and Noise Reduction — You can tune an alert's threshold from real data, and add a missing alert for a failure mode you have just seen happen.
- Postmortem and Incident Learning — You can write a postmortem for a routine incident, identify contributing causes rather than stopping at the trigger, and track its actions to closure.
- Chaos Engineering and Failure Testing — You can take part in a planned failure test on a system, following the test plan someone else wrote.

Cost and DevEx
- Cloud Cost Management — You can read a cost report and say which services and environments the spend sits in. You carry out a saving someone else has identified, such as deleting unattached volumes, and confirm it in the next bill.
- Capacity Forecasting and Right-Sizing — You can read utilisation dashboards and say whether a service has headroom left. You apply a resource limit someone has sized for you and check the effect afterwards.
- Platform Self-Service Tooling — You can fix a bug in an existing platform tool or template and add a worked example to it, with a reviewer pairing on the change. You use the tools the way a product engineer would before you change them.
- Developer Platform Documentation and Enablement — You can write a how-to or a worked example for a platform feature you know well, and keep it correct as the feature changes. You watch someone follow your instructions rather than assuming they read as you intended.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can follow a plan someone else wrote, keep your own tasks up to date, and flag a task you own as soon as you know it will slip.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate a task you have been given once the approach is clear, and you say promptly when the estimate turns out to be wrong.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can own a piece of work after release: you watch how it behaves, fix what you broke, and are never chased for a status update.
- Quality Focus — You can choose checks that suit the work in front of you, catch your own mistakes before review, and confirm the result behaves once it is live.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can diagnose problems in work you did not build, and you fix the underlying cause instead of routing around the symptom.
- Domain Expertise — You can apply the basics of your field to the work you are given, and you know who to consult at the edge of what you know.
- Continuous Learning — You can pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it, and you turn what you learned into something others can reuse.

Communication
- Communication — You can explain your work to your team so they can act on it, and you take vague requirements and ask the questions that sharpen them.
- Collaboration — You can work well with people in other roles, share context and credit, and take criticism of your work without defending territory.
- Technical Writing — You can document your own work well enough for a colleague to follow it unaided, and you keep that document current as the work changes.
- Stakeholder Management — You can keep your manager and immediate team informed of your progress, and you raise an issue before someone else discovers it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can act on direction well, seek feedback on how you work, and be transparent about what you need help with.
- Mentoring — You can share what you have just learned with your peers and help a newer colleague find their way around.
- Strategic Thinking — You can explain why the work you were given matters and who it is for.