Job Description

Principal Platform Engineer
DevEx, GitLab, and Doing Things Properly
Sydney, hybrid

Tired of being the DevEx janitor?

You’ve spent your career improving developer experience. Often cleaning up messes you didn’t make, with half the influence you needed.

This time, you’ll lead the strategy. Define the roadmap. And fix things the right way, with the runway and support to back it up.

In your first 6 months, you’ll lead a GitLab migration and build the platform experience that 150 engineers actually rely on. From CI to observability, in an environment where DevEx isn’t an afterthought.

Responsibilities have been deliberately split.
There’s a team focused on Linux infrastructure. And a dedicated Platform team (yours) focused on internal enablement.

Your mission is to help developers build faster and better.

Instead of juggling conflicting priorities, you’ll have the space to go deep on DevEx. To design, build, and scale the tooling that makes a real difference to how engineers work.

You won’t be firefighting production in AWS. You’ll be building systems that improve velocity, clarity, and developer confidence. From GitLab and CI/CD to observability, automation, and security workflows.

The messy stuff (the good kind)…
Right now, some of the smartest engineers are working on FPGA systems, AI models, and radar tech. But their workflows don’t always keep pace. GitLab adoption is still growing, CI/CD varies across teams, and tooling is evolving.

This role is your chance to bring consistency and scale DevEx across a truly unique engineering environment.

The maturity level is what you’d expect from a fast-paced scale-up, there's advocacy for change, which means more opportunity to shape things properly. You’re not maintaining someone else’s mess; you’re helping define the platform strategy and centralise tooling from the ground up.

This is a Principal role. You’ll have real influence. You’ll shape direction. You’ll prioritise the roadmap. You’ll help grow the team around you. And you’ll be trusted to get on with it. No micromanagement, no status theatre.You’ll also have the flexibility to work in a hybrid setup with a mix of in-office collaboration and remote focus time, based on what works best for you and the team.

The work is visible. The impact is real. And the runway is long.

Want a DevEx challenge with some teeth?We're looking for someone at the Principal level. Not just technically sharp, but able to tell the story of why things were built the way they were. If you’ve led DevEx improvements, driven adoption of CI/CD, or untangled the mess between dev and infra teams, we want to hear about it.

You'll also need to be comfortable working close to the metal. Proficiency in backend systems programming or scripting (Go, Python, Bash) is important as you'll need to build tools that engineers actually use.

Don’t worry if your CV isn’t ready. Let’s talk.

Julien@theonset.com.au |  0406 158 832