About the position
Job Description - Specialist Platform Engineer
Duration: 6 months
Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng
Core technology stack:
Kubernetes / EKS / Security - Expert
Kong Konnect & APIOps - Expert
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform - Expert
CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) - Expert
Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) - Expert
GitOps (Argo CD / Flux) - Strong
Container Security (Trivy, Cosign, Falco, OPA/Kyverno) - Strong
Observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Splunk, New Relic) - Strong
AWS (Primary), with AI/Bedrock exposure preferred
Job Description / Responsibilities:
Product & Service Direction, Design & Performance Management
- Define product and technical strategy in collaboration with the CIO and business product owners (end-to-end/full stack)
- Act as the primary interface with senior business stakeholders, owning the product-owner relationship
- Take full accountability for product and solution delivery, including risk ownership
- Apply design thinking to develop scalable, architecturally sound solutions
- Lead the creation of solution blueprints aligned to short-, medium-, and long-term organisational strategy
- Collaborate across CTO, CSO, and architecture teams to guide cost-effective technology decisions
- Drive scoping, prioritisation, and integration planning across front-end, back-end, and integration teams
- Ensure alignment to enterprise architecture and infrastructure standards (IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, containerisation)
- Monitor and optimise platform and application performance across the enterprise
- DevOps & Platform Engineering
- Operate and optimise production EKS environments hosting API gateways, AI runtimes, and integrations
- Own Kong Konnect (control and data planes, plugins, traffic policies including LLM/MCP)
- Lead APIOps practices using decK, OpenAPI, Spectral, and GitOps pipelines
- Manage and evolve MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and lead its consolidation into Kong
- Implement supply chain security (Trivy, Cosign, SBOMs, OPA/Kyverno)
- Ensure runtime security and compliance (Falco, CIS benchmarks, audit logging)
- Own GitOps delivery frameworks (Argo CD / Flux)
- Mentor and guide senior engineers while enforcing architectural best practices
Delivery Management
- Lead agile delivery across squads covering both Run and Change initiatives
- Collaborate with transformation teams for effective resource planning and programme delivery
- Embed and sustain agile practices (e.g., retrospectives, continuous improvement)
- Strengthen product owner capability to support informed decision-making
- Partner with Risk, Security, CTO, and other stakeholders to ensure alignment and governance
Background and Experience Required:
- Minimum 4+ years of hands-on experience with production Kubernetes environments at scale
- 3+ years proven experience in regulated industries (banking, insurance, or healthcare)
- Strong background in full-stack platform engineering, DevOps, and API management
- Demonstrated ability to lead enterprise platform design and delivery
Must-have Skills (Mandatory Skills):
Full Kubestronaut Certification (non-negotiable):
- Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA)
- Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA)
- Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
- Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) (all certifications must be active)
- AWS Certified Developer - Associate (active)
- Expert-level Kubernetes / EKS experience
- Production experience with Kong Konnect (or Kong Gateway / Enterprise)
- Production experience with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform (CloudHub, RTF, API Manager, DataWeave)
- Strong AWS expertise (EKS, IAM, KMS, VPC)
- APIOps tooling (decK, OpenAPI, Spectral, GitOps pipelines)
Beneficial Skills (Desired Skills):
- WS Solutions Architect Professional or DevOps Engineer Professional
- Kong and/or MuleSoft certifications
- Experience with AI/LLM workloads (e.g., AWS Bedrock, RAG, vector databases, agent runtimes, MCP)
- Service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd, Cilium)
- Multi-cloud exposure (Azure / GCP)
Skill/Experience/Education
Mandatory SkillsFull Kubestronaut Certification (non-negotiable): Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA), Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA), Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS), AWS Certified Developer - Associate (active), Expert-level Kubernetes / EKS experience, Production experience with Kong Konnect (or Kong Gateway / Enterprise), Production experience with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform (CloudHub, RTF, API Manager, DataWeave), Strong AWS expertise (EKS, IAM, KMS, VPC), APIOps tooling (decK, OpenAPI, Spectral, GitOps pipelines)
Desired SkillsWS Solutions Architect Professional or DevOps Engineer Professional, Kong and/or MuleSoft certifications, Experience with AI/LLM workloads (e.g., AWS Bedrock, RAG, vector databases, agent runtimes, MCP), Service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd, Cilium), Multi-cloud exposure (Azure / GCP)
Desired Skills:
- Kubernetes/EKS/Security
- Terraform
- APIOPs
- CI/CD
- Fullstack Platform Engineer
