Platform Developer

Roles and responsibilities

• Collaborate proactively with a globally distributed team
• Write, test and document high quality code to create new features
• Debug issues and interact with a vibrant community
• Review code produced by other engineers
• Attend conferences to represent Canonical and the Charmed Observability Stack
• Work from home with global travel 2 to 4 weeks for internal and external events
  

What we are looking for in you

• You love technology, observability and working with brilliant people
• You value soft skills and are passionate, enterprising, thoughtful, and self-motivated
• You have a Bachelor's or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or similar degree
• You have a proven understanding of the importance of observability and monitoring for keeping software running smoothly
• You have strong working knowledge of modern monitoring technologies like Prometheus, Alertmanager, Grafana, Loki, Mimir, etc., and how they fit together
• You are a skilled Python developer, preferably with a track record in open source
• You have a working knowledge of Go
• You have proven, hands-on experience deploying, configuring and using Kubernetes
• You are comfortable contributing to open source codebases maintained by other companies, you have a history of driving consensus in groups of multiple stakeholders with different interests and getting the resulting work delivered
• You have experience with infrastructure-as-code and configuration management tools
• You have interest and experience with two or more of the following: Ubuntu Linux, container images, Debian packaging, snap, distributed systems.

Desired candidate profile

1. Platform Design and Development

• Platform Architecture: Design and implement the underlying architecture for a platform that can be used by other developers, services, or applications within the organization.
• API Development: Develop robust and well-documented APIs that expose platform capabilities and services to external and internal users. This includes RESTful APIs, GraphQL, or gRPC-based APIs.
• Frameworks and Tools: Build reusable software frameworks and tools that abstract away common tasks for developers, enabling them to focus on building applications rather than worrying about infrastructure.

2. Infrastructure Management

• Cloud and On-Premise Infrastructure: Design, build, and maintain infrastructure (e.g., cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) to support platform scalability and performance.
• Automation: Implement automation scripts and tools (e.g., using tools like Terraform, Ansible, or Kubernetes) to streamline the deployment, management, and scaling of platform components.
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Integrate CI/CD pipelines to automate the process of building, testing, and deploying platform components, ensuring the development process is efficient and reliable.

3. Performance Optimization

• Scalability: Design platform components and services to be scalable, ensuring that as demand increases, the platform can handle the increased load without performance degradation.
• Monitoring and Metrics: Set up monitoring tools to track the performance of the platform, identifying bottlenecks and optimizing areas that can improve the overall efficiency and responsiveness.
• Load Balancing and Caching: Implement techniques such as load balancing, content delivery networks (CDNs), and caching to ensure high availability and fast response times.

4. Security and Compliance

• Data Protection: Ensure that the platform is designed with strong security measures, such as encryption, authentication, and authorization, to protect sensitive data.
• Compliance: Adhere to industry-specific compliance regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) by integrating necessary security and data handling protocols into the platform.

5. Collaboration and Developer Support

• Documentation: Provide comprehensive documentation for platform usage, APIs, frameworks, and services to support other developers and users. This includes code samples, tutorials, and troubleshooting guides.
• Developer Enablement: Work closely with internal development teams to understand their needs and ensure the platform meets those needs. Provide tools, libraries, and integrations that make the development process more efficient.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with product managers, backend engineers, operations teams, and other stakeholders to align platform development with business goals and product requirements.