Lead Platform Automation Engineer

About the Role
Platform Engineering builds and supports reusable platform capabilities that improve developer experience, accelerate delivery, and enable consistent provisioning and lifecycle management of key enterprise platforms.

The Lead Platform Automation Engineer is an individual contributor role focused on improving how engineering teams provision, manage, and consume core technology platforms such as Databases, Integration, Middleware, Messaging, and related shared services.

This role has been created to strengthen developer enablement and automation across platform engineering by building self-service patterns, CI/CD-enabled workflows, and infrastructure-as-code capabilities that make platform adoption faster, safer, and more consistent.

Unlike traditional operational support roles, this position is centered on developer experience, automated provisioning, platform lifecycle management, reusable engineering patterns, and hands-on delivery using AWS technologies, Terraform, and modern DevOps/DevExperience/DevEnablement practices.

**This role requires 2 days/week on-site at our Owings Mills, MD Campus location.

Role Summary

• The Lead Platform Automation Engineer designs, builds, and continuously improves automation capabilities that enable application and platform teams to provision and manage enterprise platforms through consistent, secure, and reliable developer-facing workflows.
• This role balances strong hands-on engineering with practical platform design, working closely with product owners, technology accountable leaders, platform teams, cloud engineering, security, and application engineering to deliver reusable capabilities that support the firm’s modernization strategy.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain reusable automation patterns for provisioning and managing enterprise platforms, including Databases, Integration, Middleware, Messaging, and related shared services.
• Improve developer experience by creating self-service workflows, clear platform interfaces, standardized templates, and well-documented onboarding paths for engineering teams.
• Develop and maintain Terraform modules, infrastructure-as-code patterns, and automated lifecycle management capabilities for AWS-based platform services.
• Build and extend CI/CD pipelines that support platform provisioning, configuration, testing, promotion, release, and ongoing operational changes.
• Automate platform lifecycle activities such as provisioning, configuration, patching, scaling, backup integration, policy enforcement, decommissioning, and technical debt remediation.
• Partner with platform SMEs to convert repeatable operational procedures into reliable, testable, and supportable automation capabilities.
• Implement automation using AWS-native services, scripting, APIs, configuration management practices, and secure integration patterns.
• Embed security, resiliency, observability, compliance, tagging, cost management, and operational standards into automation by default.
• Collaborate with Application Engineering, Platform Engineering, Cloud Engineering, Security, and Enterprise Architecture to ensure automation patterns align with enterprise standards and delivery needs.
• Troubleshoot complex automation, pipeline, and provisioning issues across cloud infrastructure, platform services, and developer-facing workflows.
• Contribute to Agile delivery by defining technical stories, estimating work, maintaining Jira updates, and delivering incremental platform automation improvements.
• Produce high-quality documentation, including developer guides, automation standards, module usage patterns, release notes, runbooks, and support handoff materials.
• Mentor engineers on automation practices, infrastructure as code, CI/CD usage, and platform consumption patterns.
• Communicate technical designs and delivery progress clearly to engineering teams, product owners, and technology leaders.

Business Knowledge and Enterprise Impact:

• Strong understanding of how developer experience, automation, and self-service capabilities improve engineering productivity, platform adoption, and delivery consistency.
• Ability to translate platform team needs and application team pain points into reusable automation patterns and practical engineering solutions.
• Experience supporting regulated, risk-aware environments where automation must satisfy security, compliance, auditability, and operational control requirements.
• Strong systems thinking, balancing standardization, governance, reliability, cost management, and developer velocity.
• Operates at a level consistent with a senior engineer role, influencing platform engineering practices and delivering meaningful improvements across multiple technology domains.

Qualifications

Required:

• Typically 7+ years of experience designing, building, automating, or operating enterprise technology platforms.
• Experience building self-service developer workflows, reusable modules, templates, platform APIs, or internal developer platform capabilities.
• Extensive hands-on experience with CI/CD platforms and practices, including pipeline design, automated testing, controlled promotion, release automation, and secure deployment patterns.
• Strong experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code practices for provisioning, configuration, policy enforcement, and lifecycle management.
• Broad experience automating AWS-based infrastructure and platform services using AWS-native capabilities, APIs, scripting, and integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of multiple enterprise platform domains, such as databases, integration platforms, middleware, messaging, eventing, observability, and shared runtime services.
• Strong scripting or programming skills in one or more languages commonly used for automation, such as Python, Groovy, Java, Go, or TypeScript.
• Solid understanding of cloud networking, identity and access management, secrets management, logging, monitoring, and platform security fundamentals.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred:

• Experience with Agile delivery practices and tools such as Jira, including backlog refinement, story delivery, and iterative improvement of engineering capabilities.
• AWS, Terraform, DevOps, or platform engineering certifications are desirable but not required.

Applicants for employment in the US must have work authorization that does not now or in the future require sponsorship of a visa for employment authorization in the United States (e.g., H1-B visa, F-1 visa (OPT), TN visa or any other non-immigrant work status).

FINRA Requirements

FINRA licenses are not required and will not be supported for this role.

Work Flexibility

This role is eligible for hybrid work, with up to three days per week from home.

Base Salary Ranges

Please review the job posting for the location of this specific opportunity.

$122,000.00 - $209,000.00 for the location of: Maryland, Colorado, Washington and remote workers
$135,000.00 - $230,000.00 for the location of: Washington, D.C.
$153,000.00 - $261,000.00 for the location of: New York, California

Placement within the range provided above is based on the individual’s relevant experience and skills for the role.  Base salary is only one component of our total compensation package.  Employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus, which is determined upon company and individual performance.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At T. Rowe Price, our associates are our greatest asset. We thrive because our company culture is built on inclusion and because we sustain a work environment where associates can bring their best selves to work every day. The backgrounds, talents, and experiences of our global associates allow us to embrace new ideas and perspectives that move our business priorities forward and enable us to deliver strong client outcomes. Here, you can expect equal opportunity and fair and consistent treatment for all.

Benefits

T. Rowe Price is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity of thought, gender, and race. We believe our continued success depends upon the equal treatment of all associates and applicants for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed, color, national origin, sex, gender, age, mental or physical disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, citizenship status, military or veteran status, pregnancy, or any other classification protected by country, federal, state, or local law.