Platform Engineer VI — IIA (Offshore Lead)
JOB TITLE: Platform Engineer VI
JOB SUMMARY
Charter's Infrastructure Intelligence and Analytics (IIA) team builds and operates the data platform and AI agent infrastructure that powers proactive network monitoring and autonomous investigation for Charter's network operations. The Platform Engineer VI serves as the offshore lead for IIA platform engineering, responsible for production support during offshore hours, data pipeline health, cost optimization, building/leading the offshore platform engineering team, and developing the application code, automation, and internal tooling that support these systems. This role requires the seniority to make independent architectural and operational decisions without escalating to onshore leadership during their shift.
MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Production Support and Operations
· Own production support during offshore hours. Serve as first responder for infrastructure incidents, pipeline failures, and agent downtime.
· Monitor data pipelines feeding agents and anomaly detection models. Ensure upstream data is landing on time and in expected format.
· Triage and resolve production issues independently. Escalate to onshore only for decisions requiring architectural changes or cross-team coordination.
· Maintain and improve monitoring dashboards for pipeline health, agent availability, and data freshness.
Cost and Resource Optimization
· Build and maintain cost dashboards covering AWS infrastructure spend, AI compute/token costs, and third-party service costs.
· Monitor token consumption across deployed agents. Identify cost anomalies and recommend optimization strategies.
· Optimize resource utilization across compute, storage, and networking. Right-size infrastructure based on usage patterns.
· Support pilot cost modeling: measure cost per user, project total cost at scale, and provide data for expansion decisions.
Data Availability and Pipeline Health
· Ensure agents are getting the data they need. Monitor data availability, freshness, and quality for all sources feeding the IIA Data Lake.
· Handle upstream data availability issues: identify when sources stop landing, coordinate with upstream data owners for resolution.
· Support data pipeline backfills and recovery when issues are detected.
· Coordinate with data engineering team on pipeline health checks and SLA monitoring, and coordinate on scheduler maintenance and development (Airflow, event-driven triggers).
Application Development and Tooling
· Support and maintain existing ETL pipelines written in Scala/Spark, including troubleshooting, enhancements, and onboarding new data sources.
· Develop and maintain application code: scripts, CLIs, small services, and automation utilities (primarily Python) that support data ingestion, deployment, environment provisioning, and operational workflows.
· Write integration code and glue services that connect IIA systems with upstream data providers, downstream consumers, and external platforms.
Leadership
· Lead and grow the offshore platform engineering team. Mentor junior engineers and establish operational standards.
· Define and enforce runbooks, escalation procedures, and operational best practices for the offshore team to follow during production support.
· Coordinate across time zones with onshore platform engineers, data engineers, and data scientists to ensure smooth handoffs.
· Participate in architectural decisions and provide input on infrastructure design based on operational experience.
· Perform other duties as required.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Skills/Abilities and Knowledge
· Ability to read, write, speak and understand English
· Strong communication skills with ability to lead across time zones and coordinate with onshore teams
· Expert-level experience with AWS services: EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, Glue, Athena, EMR, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch
· Strong experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform preferred, CloudFormation acceptable)
· Experience with production monitoring, alerting, and incident response at scale
· Experience with cost monitoring and optimization in AWS environments
· Experience with containerization (Docker) and CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI preferred)
· Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems (e.g., Kafka, SNS/SQS, EventBridge)
· Proficiency with Linux-based operating systems and shell scripting
· Experience managing and mentoring engineering teams
· Demonstrated ability to make independent technical decisions and triage production issues without escalation
· Understanding of data pipeline architectures (batch and streaming) and common failure modes
· Understanding of networking fundamentals: DNS, CIDR, NAT, VPC endpoints, firewalls, security groups
· Proficiency in Python (or a comparable general-purpose language) for building automation, tooling, and applications
· Solid software engineering fundamentals: Git-based workflows, code review, modular and reusable design, dependency management, and writing maintainable, documented code
· Experience writing automated tests (unit/integration) for application and infrastructure code, and integrating those tests into CI/CD
· Ability to write integration code against REST APIs and cloud SDKs (e.g., AWS SDK / boto3)
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Skills/Abilities and Knowledge
· Experience with Apache Spark (Scala preferred) for distributed and streaming data processing such as Spark Streaming or structured streaming.
· Experience with Apache Kafka or similar streaming platforms
· Experience with Airflow or similar workflow orchestration platforms
· Experience with graph databases (AWS Neptune, Neo4j)
· Familiarity with AI/ML infrastructure requirements (model serving, token cost monitoring, artifact management)
· Experience in the telecommunications industry or other large-scale network operations environments
· Experience with LLM/agent deployment infrastructure and observability
· AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or similar)
· Experience developing and operating small services or APIs (e.g., FastAPI/Flask) in a production environment
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Systems Engineering, or related field, or relevant experience
Related Experience
· Bachelor's degree: 8+ years of platform/infrastructure engineering experience, including 2+ years in a lead or senior role
· Master's degree: 6+ years of platform/infrastructure engineering experience, including 2+ years in a lead or senior role
About Cognizant
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, bridging the gap between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization’s unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, drive tangible outcomes and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at cognizant.ai or @cognizant.
Additional employment information
Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.
Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview.
Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial or local laws.
