Engineering Lead, AWS Kubernetes Platform
Internal Role Title– Engineering Lead
Hello we're Virgin Australia.We’re the airline that dares to be different, bold, down-to-earth and built around giving our guests real choice. Safety is our backbone, service is our heartbeat, and our people are our superpower.
We’re vibrant, authentic and unapologetically human. Here, you can bring your whole self, your Virgin Flair and your ambition to a team that champions individuality, innovation and a whole lot of heart. If you’re excited by meaningful work, real opportunities to grow, and a culture where you can genuinely make a difference, you’ll feel right at home with us.
Our ambition is to build the airline people love, and technology is central to making that happen. We're building a new Platform Engineering capability that will make software delivery simpler, faster and more secure across the enterprise. If you're passionate about cloud platforms, engineering excellence and enabling other engineers to do their best work, we'd love to hear from you.
What you'll be doing…
As Engineering Lead – AWS Kubernetes Platform, you'll provide hands-on technical leadership for the platform that enables Virgin Australia's engineering teams to deploy and operate containerised workloads securely, reliably and at scale. You'll help shape the architecture and engineering direction of our Amazon EKS platform while remaining close to the code, automation and operational realities. Working across Platform Engineering, Security, Architecture, Product and application teams, you'll make the safe and reliable way to run software the easiest way.
- Lead the technical direction and evolution of Virgin Australia's production EKS platform and its reusable cloud capabilities.
- Design and operate secure, resilient and scalable EKS foundations across the required AWS accounts, environments and failure domains.
- Define multi-account, multi-cluster and workload-tenancy patterns that balance isolation, reliability, cost and operational complexity.
- Automate cluster, platform-service and workload lifecycles using Infrastructure as Code and declarative delivery practices.
- Create self-service interfaces, templates and workflows that make workload onboarding and common operational tasks fast, consistent and observable.
- Establish platform service-level objectives and improve availability, performance, capacity, recovery and operational readiness using telemetry and production evidence.
- Lead safe, repeatable Kubernetes, node and platform-add-on upgrades, patching and vulnerability-remediation practices.
- Embed identity, policy, secrets, network controls and software-supply-chain security into the platform by default.
- Improve platform economics through capacity management, autoscaling, cost visibility and continuous right-sizing.
- Lead incident response and problem-solving for complex platform issues, turning lessons into automation and lasting improvements.
- Mentor engineers, review designs and code, and foster shared ownership of platform quality.
- Partner with application teams to understand their workflows, improve developer experience and evolve the platform through measurable feedback.
You'll be great in this role if ….
You’re passionate about building scalable, reliable cloud platforms that enable engineering teams to deliver exceptional outcomes. You enjoy solving complex technical challenges, leading by example, and fostering a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement and engineering excellence. You’re comfortable working across technical and business teams, influencing outcomes and driving platform capabilities that support enterprise-wide success.
To be successful in this role, you'll bring:
- Significant experience building and operating Kubernetes platforms in production, ideally using Amazon EKS.
- Deep knowledge of AWS architecture, including networking, identity, security, compute and multi-account environments.
- Strong understanding of Kubernetes networking, scheduling, workload isolation, autoscaling, security and lifecycle management.
- Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD and declarative or GitOps-style platform operations.
- Experience establishing observability, service-level objectives, incident response and reliability practices for critical platforms.
- The ability to diagnose complex distributed-system problems across cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes and application boundaries.
- Software engineering experience and the ability to build maintainable platform automation and tooling.
- Experience designing reusable, self-service capabilities around the needs of engineering teams.
- The ability to influence technical direction across Security, Architecture, Engineering and operational stakeholders.
- A pragmatic approach that balances reliability, security, developer experience, cost and delivery speed.
It would be valuable if you also bring experience with regulated or safety-critical environments, Kubernetes multi-tenancy, software-supply-chain security, FinOps, disaster recovery or large-scale platform migrations.
We're committed to looking after you, with some of the best benefits and conditions in the industry – including (but not limited to):
- Discounted flights for you and your loved ones (including $1000 worth of travel credits per year)
- A flexible, hybrid work style. Work from home or the office, adapt your location to suit your style and needs
- Discounts on travel insurance, lounge membership, car hire, accommodation, and experiences worldwide
- Retail, technology, wellness and lifestyle discounts.
- Free counselling and access to a wellbeing app to support your physical, mental, social and financial health
- 'Dress for Your Day' – enjoy the freedom to wear whatever makes you feel great for the type of work you do and the day you have ahead of you.
When everyone is included, everyone wins…
We're all individuals. And we love that. That's why we encourage applications from Indigenous Australians, people with disability, those from diverse cultural backgrounds, our friends in the LGBTQIA+ community, and anyone else who wants to join our family.
Ready to apply? We're ready to hear from you. .
