Senior Platform Engineer (IT Services)

Position Overview

The Information Technology (ITS) department at Charles River Associates is currently a team of more than 40 professionals dedicated to enhancing, maintaining, and developing the firm's technology infrastructure and security based in offices around the globe. The team is comprised of four functions: Service Delivery & Telecom, Enterprise Application Solutions, Infrastructure, Networking and Cloud Solutions, Information Security.

Primarily a Microsoft house, CRA is looking to maximize the performance of our on-premise systems and hybrid infrastructure, meaning experience with cloud technologies is essential for this role.

The Senior Platform Engineer is responsible for designing, building, and continuously improving the firm's hybrid infrastructure platforms spanning on-premises datacenters and public cloud environments. This role focuses on platform engineering practices, automation, infrastructure-as-code, and operational excellence to deliver scalable, secure, and self-service infrastructure services.

The engineer will partner closely with cloud, networking, security, automation, and application teams to create reusable platform capabilities, automate infrastructure lifecycle management, and enable modernization initiatives across the enterprise. This position plays a key role in advancing CRA's hybrid cloud strategy through platform standardization, governance, observability, cost optimization, and automation-first operational practices. Primary responsibilities include:

Platform Engineering & Service Enablement

• Design, build, and maintain hybrid infrastructure platforms supporting public cloud and on-premises environments.
• Develop reusable platform services that enable self-service provisioning and standardized infrastructure deployment.
• Establish platform standards, golden images, reference architectures, and engineering guardrails.
• Contribute to enterprise platform roadmaps and modernization initiatives.

Infrastructure Automation & IaC

• Develop and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code solutions using Terraform, Terraform Cloud, Bicep, Ansible, and automation frameworks.
• Build automation workflows for provisioning, compliance validation, lifecycle management, patching, backup, and disaster recovery.
• Develop reusable infrastructure modules and automation pipelines following DevOps and Platform Engineering principles.

Cloud-enabled Operations & Support

• Engineer and optimize hybrid cloud environments across VMware Cloud Foundation, Azure, AWS, and future cloud platforms.
• Support a "Cloud Landing Zone" architecture pattern.
• Assist with workload discovery and migration readiness activities, then execute migration tasks (e.g., provisioning, cutovers, validation) for workloads moving to multi-cloud strategy.
• Infrastructure optimization and improve day-day management of on-premises compute, storage, and virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere) that would introduce efficiencies thru automated workflows.
• Experience managing a Cloud-enabled Identity and Directory Services implementing and maintaining Active Directory/Azure AD integration (Entra), RBAC/ABAC, policy-based access control, service principals, and secrets management across cloud environments.
• Support a hybrid network connectivity by implementing, validating, and troubleshooting connectivity between on-prem and cloud environments (e.g. SDWAN, ExpressRoute, Direct Connect, Private Gateways) in partnership with Network Reliability team, InfoSec, including segmentation, routing, firewall rules, load balancing, and latency/bandwidth requirements for target workloads.
• Familiarity with cloud governance & FinOps enablement by implementation of governance controls (guardrails, tagging, policy enforcement), cost management (FinOps) reporting, and securing a hybrid environment.

Desired Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree (Master's preferred) in a relevant technology-related discipline;
• Azure/AWS Solutions Architect or cloud related certifications preferred, HashiCorp Terraform Associate or Advanced certifications desirable;
• 8+ years supporting enterprise-scale infrastructure and multi-cloud hyperscalers (eg. Azure, AWS, GCP);
• 5+ years working with Terraform and advanced understanding of Infrastructure-as-Code methodologies;
• Deep experience designing, building, and operating CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and enterprise source control platforms to enable automated, secure, and scalable infrastructure and application delivery;
• Experience building automation using ansible, bash, powershell, python scripting, and Rest APIs;
• Experience with cloud governance, policy management, and FinOps practices.
• Understanding of cloud networking, DNS, cloud-enabled identity services, security controls, and hybrid connectivity;
• Hands-on experience with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, or similar observability platforms;
• Familiarity with Internal Developer Platforms (IDP).

Preferred

• Experience with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), vSphere, and hybrid cloud architectures;
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, AKS, EKS, or OpenShift;
• Experience with Databricks infrastructure, AI platform hosting, or enterprise data platforms;
• Experience integrating AIOps, observability, or monitoring platforms.

Career Growth and Benefits

• CRA's robust skills development programs, including both formal and informal programs, encourage you to thrive as an individual and team member. Beginning with research and analysis skill building, training continues with technical training, presentation skills, internal seminars, and career mentoring and performance coaching from an assigned senior colleague. Additional leadership and collaboration opportunities exist through internal firm development activities.
• We offer a comprehensive total rewards program including a superior benefits package, wellness programming to support physical, mental, emotional and financial well-being, and in-house immigration support for foreign nationals and international business travelers.

Work Location Flexibility

CRA creates a work environment that enables our colleagues to benefit from being together in the office to best deliver on our promise of career growth, mentorship and inclusivity. At the same time, we recognize that individuals realize a range of benefits when working from home periodically. We currently expect that individuals spend at least 3 to 4 days a week working in the office (which may include traveling to another CRA office or to client meetings), with specific days determined in coordination with your practice or team.