Principal Platform Engineer

Responsibilities

• Define and execute a multi-year Platform Engineering roadmap aligned to Sunflower Bank's business strategy, target-state architecture, risk appetite, merger integration priorities, and IT modernization outcomes.
• Establish and evolve the Internal Developer Platform and shared technology services using a product operating model, with clear service ownership, roadmaps, lifecycle standards, support models, and measurable customer outcomes.
• Define platform capabilities including: Developer self-service, Infrastructure automation, CI/CD services, Security guardrails, Identity integration, Observability, Service onboarding, Runtime platforms.
• Promote a platform-first, reuse-before-build mindset across technology teams to reduce tool sprawl, one-off solutions, and long-term support complexity.
• Measure platform success through a balanced scorecard covering adoption, time to deliver, reliability, security and compliance, unit cost, automation, customer experience, technical debt reduction, and operational efficiency.
• Design and lead the implementation of an enterprise Internal Developer Platform.
• Build reusable platform capabilities that reduce duplication and improve consistency across engineering teams.
• Create policy-governed self-service experiences that allow authorized teams to provision environments, deploy applications, access approved services, and consume infrastructure safely, consistently, and with traceable approvals.
• Drive platform product management practices, including platform roadmaps, adoption strategies, and customer feedback loops.
• Define engineering reference architectures, platform design standards, and technology lifecycle requirements that guide modernization, integration, and decommissioning decisions.
• Establish reusable patterns for hybrid cloud, infrastructure, application delivery, integration, data, identity, resilience, and security services, while reducing unnecessary variation across the enterprise.
• Serve as a senior technical authority on engineering platforms and enterprise-scale systems.
• Ensure solutions meet defined requirements for scalability, recoverability, resiliency, observability, supportability, security, data protection, regulatory compliance, and total cost of ownership.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture to evolve target-state technology architecture.
• Establish pragmatic Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices across the organization, including service ownership, reliability engineering, capacity management, problem management, and continuous improvement.
• Define Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and Error Budget frameworks.
• Lead an enterprise observability and operational intelligence strategy that consolidates tooling, improves end-to-end service visibility, and includes: Monitoring, Logging, Tracing, Incident management, Operational analytics.
• Drive automation of operational, control, and evidence-collection processes to improve resiliency, accelerate recovery, reduce manual effort, and strengthen audit readiness.
• Provide technical leadership for critical incidents, root-cause remediation, recurring-problem elimination, and systemic platform risks, with clear accountability and transparent executive communication.
• Drive modernization and rationalization of CI/CD capabilities and software delivery pipelines, emphasizing standard services, embedded controls, automated testing, and repeatable release practices.
• Define standards for Infrastructure as Code (IaC), GitOps, platform automation, and release engineering.
• Establish engineering workflows that make the secure, compliant, and supportable path the easiest path, while improving repeatability, evidence quality, and delivery velocity.
• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and practices that improve engineering effectiveness.
• Eliminate delivery bottlenecks through automation and platform enablement.
• Define, publish, and govern enterprise engineering standards, approved patterns, exception processes, and technology lifecycle expectations, with clear ownership and measurable conformance.
• Partner closely with Information Security, Enterprise Risk, Compliance, and Internal Audit to translate requirements into automated guardrails, preventive controls, continuous monitoring, and reusable evidence.
• Promote technology consistency and architectural alignment across business domains.
• Influence technology direction without direct authority across engineering, infrastructure, security, architecture, and data teams.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior technology leadership.
• Facilitate alignment between strategic technology initiatives and platform capabilities.
• Drive adoption of platform services through transparent roadmaps, documentation, enablement, communities of practice, and a collaborative 'do it with me' partnership model.

Qualifications

• Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Preferred: Master's Degree or equivalent advanced technical education.
• Required: 10+ years of progressive software engineering, infrastructure engineering, or platform engineering experience.
• Preferred: 5+ years leading large-scale engineering initiatives or technical programs.
• Required: Demonstrated experience designing, operating, measuring, and continuously improving enterprise platform services used across multiple technology teams.
• Required: Deep understanding of Platform Engineering, Developer Experience (DevEx), DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Cloud Platforms, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD Automation, Observability, and Proven ability to influence senior technology and business leaders, build cross-functional alignment, and drive sustained operating-model and organizational change.
• Required: Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Required: Mut be bondable.
• Preferred: Experience building or operating Internal Developer Platforms.
• Preferred: Experience establishing SRE, SLO, and Error Budget practices.
• Preferred: Experience implementing engineering maturity, platform adoption, service reliability, cost transparency, automation, and customer-experience metrics.
• Preferred: Experience with cloud-native architectures and modern engineering operating models.

Benefits

People choose to “bank” with us, but for those we serve, we’re more than a bank. We strive to be the financial backbone of their lives, and we know that starts with our team. Our supportive culture empowers team members to grow and seize new opportunities. Like our namesake, the sunflower, we are:

• Rooted in Strength
• Propelled by Growth
• Individuals in a Great Whole
• Creating Possibility
• Community Focused

Afforded Outstanding Benefits, Including:

• 401(k) Plan with 6% Match
• Health/Dental/Vision Insurance
• Company-paid Life Insurance
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Fitness Reimbursement
• Paid Time Off
• Paid Holidays
• Plus many more associate perks & incentives!

If you qualify, apply online at www.sunflowerbank.com/careers. You’ve never worked anyplace like Sunflower Bank!

EEO/AA: Minorities/Females/Disabled/Vets