Lead Engineer – Platform Engineering

Location: St Petersburg, Florida - United States

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

Job Description Summary

We are looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to join the Platform Engineering team who will design and automate core infrastructure with a focus on scalable, reliable VM environments. Although automation and platform reliability are the primary responsibilities, the position is expected to leverage and incorporate AI‑assisted tools for enhanced monitoring, stability, and operational efficiency. As a technical leader, this engineer will set best practices, guide team members, and drive continuous improvement across the platform.

Job Description

Please note: This role is not eligible for Work Visa sponsorship, either currently or in the future.

This position follows our hybrid workstyle policy: Expected to be in a Raymond James office location a minimum of 10-12 days a month.

Required Skills:

• Deep experience with virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere/ESXi, Hyper‑V, KVM/Nutanix).

• Hands‑on experience with configuration management tools such as Ansible.

• Implement and support enterprise load balancer solutions (e.g., F5 BIG-IP, NGINX, Azure/AWS load balancers), including configuration, automation, and traffic‑routing policies.

• Familiarity with AI‑assisted operations tools (AIOps), or how they can fit into the workflow

• Solid understanding of CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI).

• Advanced scripting skills in Python, PowerShell, and/or Bash.

• Experience with provisioned workflow development in Service Now

• Strong knowledge of monitoring and logging platforms (Prometheus/Grafana, Splunk, Elastic, Datadog, etc.).

• Understanding of security best practices, IAM/RBAC, secrets management, and compliance frameworks.

• Strong networking and systems fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, storage).

• Experience with reliability engineering concepts (SLOs, SLIs, incident response).

• Ability to create self‑service platform patterns and reusable automation modules.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to lead designs and mentor others.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and maintain automation for VM provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management.

• Enhance and support CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and platform services.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineers across the platform engineering team.

• Use AI‑assisted tooling when beneficial for anomaly detection, event correlation, and operational insights.

• Work on standardized VM images, templates, and OS baselines to ensure consistency and security.

• Improve platform reliability through monitoring, alerting, and SRE‑aligned practices.

• Develop and maintain observability tooling, dashboards, and automated remediation workflows.

• Ensure security best practices across VM platforms, including RBAC, secrets management, and patching.

• Optimize VM capacity, performance, and resource utilization across environments.

• Collaborate with development, cloud, and security teams to deliver stable, self‑service platform capabilities.

• Produce clear technical documentation, design specifications, and platform standards.

Education

Bachelor’s: Computer and Information Science, Bachelor’s: Computer Engineering, High School (HS) (Required)

Work Experience

General Experience - 6 to 10 years

Certifications

Travel

Less than 25%

Workstyle

Hybrid

At Raymond James our associates use five guiding behaviors (Develop, Collaborate, Decide, Deliver, Improve) to deliver on the firm's core values of client-first, integrity, independence and a conservative, long-term view. 

We expect our associates at all levels to:
•  Grow professionally and inspire others to do the same
•  Work with and through others to achieve desired outcomes
•  Make prompt, pragmatic choices and act with the client in mind
•  Take ownership and hold themselves and others accountable for delivering results that matter
•  Contribute to the continuous evolution of the firm

At Raymond James – as part of our people-first culture, we honor, value, and respect the uniqueness, experiences, and backgrounds of all of our Associates.  When associates bring their best authentic selves, our organization, clients, and communities thrive. The Company is an equal opportunity employer and makes all employment decisions on the basis of merit and business needs. 

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