Lead Engineer

This role is responsible for designing, building, and operating cloud platform and DevOps capabilities across AWS and GCP. The engineer will enable reliable, secure, and scalable delivery by developing Kubernetes and Infrastructure-as-Code foundations, building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, and driving automation, observability, and operational best practices across engineering teams.

In this flex office/home role, you will be expected to work a minimum of 10 days per month from one of the following office locations: Madison, WI 53783; Boston, MA 02110, Denver, Co
Candidates must reside within a 50-mile radius of the office location (or 35-mile radius for Boston). #LI-Hybrid

Position Compensation Range:

$131,000.00 - $220,000.00

Pay Rate Type:

Salary

Compensation may vary based on the job level and your geographic work location. Relocation support is offered for eligible candidates.

This role has been not approved for sponsorship now or in the future.  This also includes current Candidates that have an approved F1 / OPT/ STEM qualification. 

Core Qualifications & Responsibilities:

Developer Experience (DevX) & Backstage Development:

• Proven experience in designing, implementing, and managing an internal developer portal, preferably with Backstage.io.
• A strong desire to improve the developer experience by creating self-service tools and streamlining workflows. 
• Expertise in developing custom Backstage plugins and customizing the platform using TypeScript, Node.js, and React to meet the unique needs of our developers.
• Experience configuring and managing the Backstage Software Catalog to provide a unified view of services, documentation, and tooling.
• Ability to create and maintain software templates using Backstage's Scaffolder to standardize project creation and enforce best practices.

Cloud and Infrastructure Management:

• Extensive experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP) and familiarity with the other. This includes expertise in core services like VPC, IAM, S3, and managed Kubernetes (EKS, GKE). 
• Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles and hands-on experience with tools like Terraform to automate the provisioning and management of cloud resources.
• Experience with Crossplane.io to manage cloud services and infrastructure through a unified, Kubernetes-native API. This includes creating and managing composite resources to abstract away the complexity of the underlying infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of containerization technologies, including Docker and Kubernetes, and their ecosystems.

CI/CD & DevOps Mindset:

• Solid experience with CI/CD principles and proficiency in building and maintaining pipelines using GitLab CI/CD.
• Experience integrating various tools into CI/CD pipelines to automate builds, testing, and deployments.
• Proficiency in managing software artifacts and dependencies using JFrog Artifactory. This includes creating and managing repositories and integrating Artifactory with our CI/CD pipelines. 
• A strong scripting and automation skill set using languages like Python, Go, or Bash.

Observability & Site Reliability Engineering (SRE):

• A solid understanding of SRE principles, including Service Level Objectives (SLOs), error budgets, and a focus on reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Hands-on experience with Datadog for full-stack observability, including setting up monitors, creating dashboards, and using APM for distributed tracing.
• A proactive approach to identifying and resolving platform issues before they impact developers.
• Experience in troubleshooting complex, distributed systems and a methodical approach to problem-solving.

Software Development Fundamentals:

• Strong programming skills in languages such as Python, TypeScript, and JavaScript.
• Experience with web development fundamentals and API design (REST, GraphQL).
• A solid understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC) best practices, including version control with Git.

• Demonstrated knowledge of modern SDLC practices and operating models (e.g., Agile, product-based teams, platform-as-a-product).
• Demonstrated experience delivering and operating cloud platforms in both AWS and GCP, including core services for compute, storage, networking, IAM, and managed Kubernetes.
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating Kubernetes platforms and tooling (e.g., cluster lifecycle, upgrades, workload onboarding patterns, ingress, service discovery, secrets/config management).
• Demonstrated experience with Infrastructure as Code and reusable module patterns across cloud providers (e.g., Terraform; CloudFormation as needed), including pipeline integration, versioning, and promotion strategies.
• Demonstrated experience with CI/CD tooling and practices (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Bitbucket pipelines), including build/test/release automation, artifact management, and environment deployment strategies.
• Demonstrated experience with GitOps and deployment automation patterns (e.g., Argo CD/Flux where applicable) for Kubernetes and cloud workloads.
• Demonstrated experience with observability and operational practices (monitoring/alerting, centralized logging, tracing, dashboards, on-call readiness, incident response, runbooks).
• Demonstrated experience applying SRE/operational metrics and reliability practices (SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, capacity/performance considerations).
• Demonstrated systems and network fundamentals for cloud environments (VPC/VNet design, DNS, routing, load balancing, proxies/firewalls, certificate/TLS basics).
• Demonstrated programming/scripting capability in one or more of: Python, Go, Java, Shell/Bash; strong Linux fundamentals.
• Demonstrated experience integrating services and tools through APIs and secure communication patterns across applications, databases, and platforms.
• Demonstrated knowledge of DevSecOps practices (secrets management, vulnerability scanning, least privilege, supply-chain controls such as signing/SBOM where applicable, and automated policy enforcement)=

In this flex office/home role, you will be expected to work a minimum of 10 days per month from one of the following office locations: Madison, WI 53783; Boston, MA 02110, Denver, Co
Candidates must reside within a 50-mile radius of the office location (or 35-mile radius for Boston). #LI-Hybrid

Licenses

• Not applicable.

Travel Requirements

• Up to 10%.

Physical Requirements

• Work primarily involves sitting/standing.

Working Conditions

• Not applicable.

Additional Information

• To ensure a strong start, all employees participate in our New Employee Orientation during their first week.  This experience is held in person at our Madison, WI Headquarters or one of our AmFam core locations to help you connect with our mission, meet key team members and build relationships that support your growth.  At times, sessions may be delivered virtually based on scheduling and availability. 
• Offer to selected candidate will be made contingent on the results of applicable background checks
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-disclosure agreement for proprietary information, trade secrets, and inventions
• Sponsorship will not be considered for this position unless specified in the posting

Preferred Qualifications:

• Previous experience in a dedicated Platform Engineering or Developer Experience (DevX) team.
• Contributions to open-source projects, especially Backstage or other developer tools.
• Familiarity with securing CI/CD pipelines and implementing secure coding practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively with developers, product managers, and other stakeholders.

• • A product-oriented mindset, treating the internal developer platform as a product with developers as your customers.

We provide benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. You will have access to comprehensive medical, dental, vision and wellbeing benefits that enable you to take care of your health. We also offer a competitive 401(k) contribution, a pension plan, an annual incentive, 9 paid holidays and a paid time off program (23 days accrued annually for full-time employees). In addition, our student loan repayment program and paid-family leave are available to support our employees and their families. Interns and contingent workers are not eligible for American Family Insurance Group benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer. It is our policy to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws pertaining to non-discrimination, non-harassment and equal opportunity. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

American Family Insurance is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please email [email protected] to request a reasonable accommodation.

#LI-BC2