Lead Platform Engineer

Job Description

What is the Opportunity?

Are you interested in working as a Lead Platform Engineer on the Global Payments Platform and DevOps team in Technology & Operations at the Royal Bank of Canada?

RBC's Global Payments Platform and DevOps Team is responsible for building and evolving the internal developer platform that accelerates software delivery across our payment systems. We design self-service infrastructure, intelligent automation, and AI-augmented engineering workflows that enable development teams to ship faster, safer, and with less toil.

Our mission is to empower developers with state-of-the-art platform capabilities, AI-driven tooling, and self-service infrastructure that enable them to create, test, and deploy their applications with speed and reliability. We pride ourselves on staying at the forefront of the industry, continuously integrating the latest advancements in platform engineering, context-aware AI, and intelligent automation to ensure our infrastructure is not only robust but also cutting-edge. By fostering a culture of collaboration, experimentation, and continuous improvement, we are dedicated to delivering best-in-class platform services that drive the success of our enterprise payment systems.

As part of our team, you will play a critical role in shaping the future of our internal developer platform, designing intelligent automation systems, and integrating AI capabilities into engineering workflows. You will lead the evolution from traditional DevOps practices toward a modern platform engineering model where self-service, automation-first thinking, and AI literacy are foundational.

What will you do?

• Lead the design and implementation of self-service platform capabilities, including golden paths, internal developer portals, and automated provisioning workflows that reduce cognitive load on development teams

• Architect and build intelligent automation systems that leverage AI to optimize CI/CD pipelines, detect anomalies, auto-remediate incidents, and accelerate delivery cycles

• Lead the development and maintenance of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks and platform abstractions that enable consistent, repeatable, and auditable infrastructure provisioning across multiple environments

• Design and implement context engineering patterns for AI-assisted development workflows, including structured prompt systems, tool-use orchestration, and context harness architectures that maximize AI effectiveness in engineering tasks

• Create, evaluate, and integrate AI-powered developer tools and coding assistants into the platform, establishing standards for responsible and effective AI usage across engineering teams

• Lead the deployment and scaling of distributed workflow orchestration systems (such as Camunda) in multi-datacenter configurations, ensuring high availability, fault tolerance, and performance at enterprise scale

• Build and maintain platform observability stacks, including metrics, logging, tracing, and AI-driven alerting systems that provide actionable insights into platform health and developer experience

• Create and review technical design documents, facilitate architecture reviews, and drive alignment across teams on platform standards and patterns

• Implement security best practices within pipelines and platform infrastructure, embedding security controls as code and shifting security left in the development lifecycle

• Mentor and provide technical leadership to team members on platform engineering, AI-assisted development practices, and emerging technologies

What do you need to succeed?

Must-have

• 8-10+ years of expertise in Platform Engineering, DevOps, or SRE roles with progressive responsibility

• Proficient developer in at least one common object-oriented language (Python, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript) with strong Bash scripting and emphasis on building reusable platform tooling

• Deep understanding of platform engineering principles including internal developer platforms (IDPs), self-service infrastructure, and golden paths

• Strong AI literacy including context engineering, prompt engineering, context harness design, tool-use patterns (MCP, function calling), and AI agent orchestration

• Experience evaluating and integrating AI-powered developer tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, Devin, or similar)

• Hands-on experience with platform and automation tools (Terraform, Ansible, Dynatrace, GitHub, Backstage/Port, Elastic, Kibana)

• Deep expertise with GitHub Actions and GitOps methodologies for CI/CD and platform automation

• Advanced Kubernetes and OpenShift experience with enterprise-scale production deployments

• Experience with distributed systems architecture and workflow orchestration platforms such as Camunda

• Extensive experience across cloud environments (Azure, AWS, OCP), Linux/Unix systems, and APIs

• Excellent communication skills with ability to present to technical and executive stakeholders

• Experience leading technical teams and mentoring engineers in platform engineering and AI-augmented practices

Nice-to-have

• Experience building internal developer portals using Backstage, Port, or custom solutions

• Hands-on experience with AI tooling integration and AI-powered developer productivity solutions

• Knowledge of context engineering methodologies for building AI agent systems, including context injection and multi-agent orchestration

• Experience with progressive delivery techniques (Blue-Green, canary deployments, feature flags)

• Experience developing custom platform tooling, CLI tools, and developer productivity frameworks

• Familiarity with payment systems and financial services technology platforms

• Relevant certifications such as CKA/CKAD, Red Hat OpenShift, or cloud platform certifications

What’s in it for you?

We thrive on the challenge to be our best, progressive thinking to keep growing, and working together to deliver trusted advice to help our clients thrive and communities prosper. We care about each other, reaching our potential, making a difference to our communities, and achieving success that is mutual.

• A comprehensive Total Rewards Program including bonuses and flexible benefits, competitive compensation, commissions, and stock where applicable

• Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities

• Ability to make a difference and lasting impact

• Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team

• A world-class training program in financial services

• Flexible work/life balance options

• Opportunities to do challenging work

• Opportunities to take on progressively greater accountabilities 

• Opportunities to build close relationships with clients

#LI-POST

#TECHPJ

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Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the application deadline date above

Our Employment Opportunities

At RBC, we are guided by living shared values of Client First, Integrity, Collaboration, Respect and Excellence and winning together as One RBC. We believe an inclusive workplace that has diverse perspectives is core to our continued growth as one of the largest and most successful banks in the world. Maintaining a workplace where our employees feel supported to perform at their best, effectively collaborate, drive innovation, and grow professionally helps to bring our Purpose to life and create value for our clients and communities. RBC strives to deliver this through policies and programs intended to foster a workplace based on respect, belonging and opportunity for all.

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Expand your limits and create a new future together at RBC. Find out how we use our passion and drive to enhance the well-being of our clients and communities at jobs.rbc.com.

RBC is presently inviting candidates to apply for this existing vacancy. Applying to this posting allows you to express your interest in this current career opportunity at RBC. Qualified applicants may be contacted to review their resume in more detail.