Junior Platform Engineer job description

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

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it.
- Write a small module from a written requirement to team conventions, and add a test that applies it in a scratch environment.
- Rotate a routine credential following the runbook, and update every place that consumes it without causing an outage.
- Triage a vulnerability scan, tell which findings are exploitable in your environment, and schedule the patch without being told to.
- Build a pipeline for a straightforward service from the templates your team already uses, and keep it green.
- Add an environment or a service configuration using the infrastructure-as-code patterns your team follows, and keep secrets out of the repository.

REQUIREMENTS
- No earlier level needed: this is the first level of the ladder

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 to team conventions, and add a test that applies it in a scratch environment.
- 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 from the documented steps and trigger its rollback when the dashboards or the runbook call for it.
- 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.
- Systems Troubleshooting — You can work through a troubleshooting checklist for a failing host or service and record what each check showed.

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.
- 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 worked example for a platform feature you have used, and watch someone follow it before you publish it.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can keep your own tasks and deadlines in a current to-do list, and tell your manager as soon as work you own will be late.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate how long a task will take once the approach is clear, and you say promptly when the estimate turns out to be wrong.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can stay responsible after you hand work over: you check it did what it was meant to, fix your own mistakes, and give updates before anyone asks.
- Quality Focus — You can choose checks that suit the task in front of you, catch your own mistakes before anyone else sees them, and confirm the result works once people start using it.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can work out what is wrong in work you did not create, and you fix the underlying cause instead of working around the symptom.
- Domain Expertise — You can apply the basics of your field to the work you are given, and ask an expert when a task goes beyond what you have learned.
- 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 so your team can act on it, and play a request back in your own words before you act on it.
- Collaboration — You can work well with people in other roles, share context and credit, and take criticism of your work without defending territory.
- Writing & Documentation — You can document your own work well enough for a colleague to follow it unaided, such as a how-to guide or a handover, and keep it current as things change.
- 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 open 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.