Manager Platform Engineering

Location: Waukesha, WI - USA

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

We are Generac, a leading energy technology company committed to powering a smarter world.

Over the 60 plus years of Generac’s history, we’ve been dedicated to energy innovation. From creating the home standby generator market category, to our current evolution into an energy technology solutions company, we continue to push new boundaries.

In the role of Manager Platform Engineering working onsite in Waukesha, Wisconsin, you will be part of the Infrastructure and Enterprise Architecture team.

The Manager Platform Engineering leads the team that designs, builds, and maintains our core infrastructure capabilities. This role combines technical strategy with people leadership to transform how technology is consumed across the enterprise. Beyond just building an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), this leader owns the broader platform ecosystem, ensuring infrastructure is accessible via multiple friction-free interfaces. This role drives the shift from manual provisioning to self-service automation, treating the platform as a product that empowers development teams to ship software securely, efficiently, and at speed.

Major Responsibilities

Platform Strategy & Architecture

• Manages the internal infrastructure ecosystem as a product, utilizing user research to define roadmaps that balance innovation with stability

• Designs and manages a unified platform architecture that spans public cloud (Azure/AWS), on-premise data centers, and edge locations

• Ensures a consistent "cloud-like" consumption model (API-driven, automated) regardless of where the workload resides

• Ensures platform capabilities are exposed through diverse methods, including command-line interfaces, APIs, and graphical portals, to meet the varied needs of engineering teams

Stakeholder Partnership

• Partners proactively with Software Engineering, Product Management, and Data leaders to ensure the platform roadmap directly supports business velocity and application requirements

• Establishes regular feedback mechanisms with internal customer groups to identify friction points in the software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) and prioritize high-impact automation

Team Leadership & People Management

• Recruits, mentors, and leads a team of Platform Engineers and DevOps specialists, fostering a culture of psychological safety, experimentation, and engineering excellence

• Sets clear technical and professional goals, conducts regular 1:1s, and manages career progression to build a high-performing, cross-functional team

• Manages team capacity, balancing strategic platform roadmap work with operational health and technical debt reduction

Automation & Tooling

• Owns the strategy for defining all infrastructure as software, utilizing tools to ensure reproducibility and disaster recovery readiness

• Oversees the pipelines and tooling that enable continuous delivery, ensuring that build-and-deploy processes are automated, secure, and observable

• Defines and maintains "Golden Paths" for application deployment and container orchestration (Kubernetes/AKS), simplifying complexity for application developers

Reliability & Operations

• Collaborates with Site Reliability Engineering to build observability and reliability into the platform by default

• Partners with Cybersecurity to embed security controls directly into the platform pipeline, ensuring compliance without stalling development velocity

Cost Efficiency & Governance

• Builds cost visibility directly into the platform, ensuring development teams see the financial impact of their resources

• Implements automated guardrails to enforce tagging standards, resource limits, and compliance controls without requiring manual approval gates

• Designs automation to identify and remedy underutilized resources, ensuring maximum value from infrastructure spend

Minimum Job Requirements

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field; or equivalent experience

Work Experience

• 7+ years of experience in IT Operations, DevOps, or Software Engineering; 2+ years of leadership experience leading technical teams

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities

• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code (ex. Terraform/Bicep) and configuration management

• Strong understanding of container orchestration (Kubernetes/AKS/EKS)

• Proficiency with CI/CD tooling (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins)

• Experience with hybrid cloud architecture (Azure preferred) and on-premise virtualization

Preferred Job Requirements

Certification / License

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate, or Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Work Experience

• Experience designing platforms for consumption via API and CLI

• Experience transitioning teams from traditional SysAdmin models to Platform Engineering

• Background with software development (Go, Python, etc.) is a plus

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities

• Familiarity with "Policy as Code" tools (ex. OPA, Sentinel)

• Experience with secrets management workflows (ex. HashiCorp Vault)

• Experience implementing FinOps or Cloud Cost Management tools

Physical Demands: While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear; and use hands to manipulate objects or controls. The employee is regularly required to stand and walk.  On occasion the incumbent may be required to stoop, bend or reach above the shoulders. The employee must occasionally lift up to 25 - 50 pounds. Specific conditions of this job are typical of frequent and continuous computer-based work requiring periods of sitting, close vision and ability to adjust focus. Occasional travel.

“We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.”