Job Title: Senior Manager, Platform Engineering

Company Name: Marqeta

Job Url: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/mqreferrals/jobs/7723774?utm_source=ziprecruiter

Job Description: Senior Manager, Platform Engineering
Remote, USA
We're seeking an experienced Senior Manager, Platform Engineering to lead our infrastructure software engineering team responsible for Marqeta's Kubernetes-based compute platform. This is a critical technical leadership role at the heart of our infrastructure, supporting the applications that process millions of payment transactions with ultra-high availability requirements.

You'll drive platform modernization, cost optimization, and operational excellence while leading a team of infrastructure software engineers who build and maintain the foundational systems that enable Marqeta's engineering organization to ship quickly and reliably.

We work Flexible First. This role can be performed remotely in the United States, only in one of our National or Premium locations, which you can review here.

The Impact You’ll Have

Leadership & Team Development

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of infrastructure software engineers focused on Kubernetes platform engineering
Build a culture of innovation, operational excellence, and customer-focused platform development
Recruit top talent and develop career growth paths for team members
Foster collaboration with application development teams, SRE, security, and other infrastructure teams
Drive technical decision-making while empowering engineers to own their solutions
Platform Strategy & Modernization

Define and execute the technical roadmap for Marqeta's Kubernetes compute platform
Drive continuous platform modernization to support evolving business needs and scale requirements
Champion platform-as-a-product mindset, treating internal engineering teams as customers
Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies and AWS services to improve platform capabilities
Lead architectural decisions for container orchestration, service mesh, observability, and developer tooling
Cost Optimization & Efficiency

Develop and implement strategies to optimize Kubernetes infrastructure costs without compromising performance or reliability
Monitor and analyze compute resource utilization, identifying opportunities for right-sizing and efficiency gains
Implement FinOps practices including chargeback/showback models, budget alerting, and cost allocation
Drive adoption of cost-effective AWS services and spot instances where appropriate
Partner with engineering teams to optimize application resource requests and limits
Operational Excellence & Availability

Ensure ultra-high availability of the production Kubernetes platform supporting payment processing workloads
Establish SLOs/SLIs for platform reliability and performance
Lead incident response for platform-level issues and drive continuous improvement through blameless postmortems
Implement comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and observability solutions
Balance innovation with stability through disciplined change management and deployment practices
SDLC & Platform Engineering

Design and implement CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation for platform infrastructure
Apply software development best practices to infrastructure code (testing, code review, version control)
Drive infrastructure-as-code initiatives using Terraform and other automation tools
Collaborate with security teams to embed security into the platform and SDLC
Enable developer productivity through self-service capabilities and golden paths
Technical Environment

You'll be working with technologies including (but not limited to):

Container Orchestration: Kubernetes, Amazon EKS
Cloud Platform: AWS (multi-account architecture)
Infrastructure-as-Code: Terraform, Helm
CI/CD: Argo
Observability: DataDog
Who You Are

8+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, or DevOps roles
5+ years of people management experience, leading technical teams through complex initiatives
Deep expertise with Kubernetes in production environments at scale (architecture, operations, troubleshooting)
Extensive Cloud fundamental knowledge (AWS preferred, including EKS, EC2, VPC, IAM, and other core services)
Proven track record of Kubernetes cost optimization and resource efficiency improvements
Strong understanding of SDLC methodologies, CI/CD practices, and infrastructure-as-code
Experience managing ultra-high availability systems (99.99%+ uptime) in production
Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.)
Hands-on experience with container technologies, service mesh, and cloud-native architectures
Strong technical leadership skills with ability to influence without authority across the organization
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
Nice-To-Haves

Experience in payments, financial services, or other highly regulated industries
Familiarity with PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and compliance requirements in cloud environments
AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or Security Specialty)
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd, AWS App Mesh)
Background with observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, etc.)
Knowledge of GitOps practices and tools (ArgoCD, Flux)
Experience with multi-tenancy and platform security patterns
Familiarity with FinOps frameworks and cloud cost management tools
Typical Process

Application Submission
Recruiter Video Call
Hiring Manager Video Call
Virtual “Onsite” consisting of 4-5, 45-60 min calls
Offer!
Compensation and Benefits
Marqeta is a Flex First company which allows you to choose your best working environment, whether that be from home or at a company office. To support Flex First, we calibrate pay to a competitive value according to working location. Compensation is aligned according to three tiers within the United States:

National: A baseline tier that applies to most of the geographic territory of the United States.
Premium: Slightly elevated from the National tier, and oriented toward a narrower set of higher cost-of-living areas, such as Los Angeles CA and Seattle WA
Premium Plus: A tier for the most expensive working areas, like the San Francisco Bay area and New York City.
Visit this page or consult with a Recruiter to determine which tier would be applicable to you.

When determining salaries, we consider several factors including, but not limi