Lead Software Engineer (Platform Engineering)

About the role

Being good neighbors – helping people, investing in our communities, and making the world a better place – is who we are at State Farm. It is at the core of how we operate and the reason for our success. We're moving with urgency to become a Next Gen Good Neighbor, with technology that strengthens human connections and enhances the customer experience. As an employee, you'll spend less time navigating systems and more time applying judgment, empathy, and expertise in the moments that matter most.

Responsibilities

We are the Platform Engineering team responsible for Source Code Management systems at State Farm — and we're in the middle of something genuinely exciting: rebuilding our entire developer platform from the ground up. We're moving away from managing infrastructure at the VM/config-management layer and toward a Kubernetes-native, GitOps-first Internal Developer Platform (IDP). We're standing up a modern GitHub SaaS footprint, migrating our engineering teams off on-prem GitLab, building Kubernetes managed resources to automate GitHub organizational state as code, writing custom Go controllers, and defining end-to-end software engineering practices that let product engineers ship features — not fight their tools or environments.

This isn't a "keep the lights on and file tickets" role. We build things. We own them end to end. We argue about the right abstractions in pull requests, we iterate based on feedback from the engineers who use our platform daily, and we have real influence over the direction we're headed. If you get excited about reconciliation loops, elegant operator design, and the idea that your platform is the product — you'll fit right in here.

We're looking for a Software Engineer with a platform engineering mindset who leads by doing: someone who can design a Kubernetes composition in the morning, pair with a teammate on a GitHub App integration in the afternoon, and have input and opinions about the end-to-end developer experience. Technical depth matters, but so does the ability to communicate, collaborate, and lift others around you.

What You'll Work On

• Design and build Kubernetes-native automation in Go - custom controllers and Crossplane compositions that manage GitHub organizational resources, repositories, teams, rulesets, and enterprise settings as declarative, reconciled state
• Own our GitHub SaaS platform - organizational governance, enterprise policy enforcement, GitHub Apps, and GitHub Hosted Actions Compute; you'll be one of the engineers defining what "GitHub at enterprise scale" looks like at State Farm
• Build the path from GitLab to GitHub - design and build automated migration tooling that moves repositories, access, and settings from our on-prem GitLab to GitHub Enterprise Cloud at scale, and partner with engineering teams to get them across with minimal disruption
• Champion platform adoption - our new platform sets the bar; your job is to help teams meet it. That means building tooling, guides, and automation that help engineering teams onboard: adapting their branching strategies, adjusting their deployment patterns, and conforming their applications to the new model
• Enable GitOps everywhere - every piece of state we own should be versioned, reconciled, and auditable; you'll help make that real

Qualifications

Ideal experience

• Go - you've built something real in Go: a CLI, a Kubernetes controller/operator, an API service, or similar; you understand Go's idioms and best practices
• Kubernetes - Kubernetes Resource Model (KRM) - CRDs, controllers, reconciliation loops, RBAC, admission webhooks; you understand why Kubernetes is a platform for building platforms, not just a place to run containers
• Crossplane - hands-on with Compositions, XRDs, Managed Resources, and Providers; or strong Kubernetes operator experience and the curiosity to go deep on Crossplane quickly

Skills

Good-to-have Experience

• GitHub Cloud Enterprise & git - enterprise administration, GitHub Apps, REST/GraphQL API automation; strong understanding of git workflows and branching strategies
• SCM migrations - GitLab administration or API automation; experience moving repositories and teams between source control platforms at scale
• Red Hat OpenShift - OpenShift-specific patterns and workload deployment on managed Kubernetes
• AWS - API Gateway, Lambda, ECS/Fargate, IAM, S3, Secrets Manager, VPC networking
• Deployment/GitOps tooling - Argo CD, Flux, or similar; you think in terms of desired state and reconciliation, not imperative scripts
• Observability - structured logging, metrics, and distributed traces; experience with Dynatrace, OpenTelemetry, and/or Grafana
• API design - RESTful and/or GraphQL service patterns

Our Stack

• Language - Go
• Platform - Kubernetes (Red Hat OpenShift), Crossplane, custom controllers and operators
• Source control - git, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, GitHub Apps, GitHub integrations
• Cloud - AWS

Benefits

Potential starting salary range: $120,000 - $150,000. Starting salary will be based on skills, background, and experience. High end of the range limited to applicants with significant relevant experience. Potential yearly incentive pay up to 15% of base salary.

Compensation is based on our standard 38:45-hour work week. On top of competitive pay, you are eligible for an annual raise and bonus.

Health & Wellbeing

• State Farm pays most of your healthcare premium with multiple plan options, including a high deductible plan
• All medical plans provide 100% coverage for in-network preventative care
• Vision, dental, telemedicine, 24/7 mental health professionals

Development & Growth

• Industry-leading training programs
• Top-notch tuition assistance programs
• Employee resource groups and mentoring

Financial Planning

• Fertility/IVF/adoption assistance
• College coaching
• National discount programs
• Interactive monthly financial workshops
• Free financial coaching
• State Farm Federal Credit Union for savings and financing

Time Off

• Initially earn up to 20 days annually
• Parental leave
• Paid holidays