Platform Engineer

Company Overview Qarbon Aerospace is a world class manufacturer of cutting-edge composite components and assemblies for the Aerospace and Space industry’s most advanced commercial and military aircraft. Qarbon Aerospace has the capabilities and resources to solve the market’s toughest challenges On-Time with Quality Assured. As a US-based company with more than 100 years of experience and 1.6 million square foot of state-of-the-art facilities, we assure quality into every fiber, letting our customer’s ideas and our employee’s passion take flight. Platform Engineer Principal Position Overview Qarbon Aerospace is growing its Emerging Technology function, which spans an on-premises data lake and a growing set of internal AI capabilities. The Platform Engineer will operationalize this environment: standing up and hardening the Kubernetes-based infrastructure that the data lake and internal AI/emerging technology workloads run on, and keeping it reliable, secure, and scalable as usage grows. This role blends data lake platform engineering with emerging AI infrastructure, and the person in it will also participate directly in driving development of new platform capabilities, not just keeping the lights on. This is a ground-floor opportunity to build and shape the platform underpinning Qarbon's data lake and internal AI initiatives. This role offers direct hand in driving development, not just operating what already exists and a collaborative, small-team environment with direct visibility to IT and business leadership. Key Responsibilities Deploy, operate, and harden Kubernetes clusters and supporting infrastructure for the data lake and internal AI/emerging technology platforms Operationalize the environment: build out monitoring, alerting, logging, backup/DR, access control, and CI/CD practices so platform services run reliably in production Administer and tune the on-premises data lake, including storage, compute, and pipeline infrastructure supporting ingestion and processing Support and extend the internal AI platform, including model-serving, GPU/compute resource management, and integration of AI and data services Participate directly in driving development of new platform capabilities alongside the Emerging Technology team, not solely operations and support Partner with Data Engineering, AI/ML, and Security/Compliance roles to deliver shared, well-governed platform infrastructure Ensure platform architecture and operations align with CMMC, CUI, and export-control requirements Troubleshoot infrastructure and performance issues across the containerized platform stack Maintain clear technical documentation for platform architecture, configurations, and operational runbooks Experience and Education Qualifications Required: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent and at least 10 years of related experience 3+ years of hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production (deployment, scaling, networking, security, troubleshooting) Strong Linux systems administration background Experience operating or supporting a data lake or similar large-scale data platform (storage, ingestion, pipeline infrastructure) Working knowledge of infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD practices Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure concepts (GPU resource management, model-serving, or similar) Ability to work independently, take ownership of platform reliability, and communicate technical tradeoffs clearly Must be a U.S. Person as defined by ITAR (22 CFR 120.15), as this role may involve access to export-controlled technical data Preferred: Experience with CUDA and GPU-accelerated compute environments Familiarity with Azure or hybrid on-prem/cloud infrastructure MLOps experience (model deployment pipelines, experiment tracking, inference optimization) Kubernetes certification (CKA or equivalent) Experience in an aerospace, defense, or other regulated manufacturing environment Familiarity with CMMC Level 2, CUI handling, or similar compliance frameworks What does Qarbon Aerospace have to offer? Company Paid Benefits available immediately upon employment. Basic Life Insurance Short-Term Disability (STD) & Long-Term Disability (LTD) 12 Paid Holidays Flex Time Off Medical/Prescription Insurance Dental & Vision Insurance Critical Illness Insurance / Hospital Indemnity Insurance / Accident Insurance Life Insurance and AD&D Insurance Savings and Spending Accounts Health Flexible Spending Account (FSA) Dependent Care FSA Health Savings Account (HSA) Immediate vesting on 401(k) Plans Tuition Reimbursement