Principal Platform Engineer

Role Description

The Aviation Intelligence (AI) team within CA Engineering has the end-to-end responsibility to ensure that Collins Aerospace and broader RTX data assets are managed with integrity and quality while being consumed by our critical customer facing applications.

As a Principal Platform Engineer on the Aviation Intelligence team, you will be responsible for leading critical projects and coordination for the department, supporting our Ascentia and FlightAware crews that focus on AI/ML projects, data science and data management.

What You Will Do:

• Own and evolve AWS infrastructure supporting data platform, ML training, and analytics workloads (Iceberg/Trino, ETL pipelines, Kubeflow/MLflow)
• Design, deploy, and maintain EKS-based services and Kubernetes workloads
• Build and manage Terraform infrastructure across environments (dev/staging/prod)
• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application deployment (GitLab/GitHub)
• Operate and improve Kafka/Redpanda clusters
• Improve reliability, observability, and performance of prediction services
• Support Dagster for data workflow orchestration
• Collaborate with Data Science, ML Engineering, and Data Engineering to productionize models and data pipelines
• Strengthen AWS IAM, networking, and connectivity between cloud and on-prem systems
• Support cyber hardening efforts with our RTX cyber team
• Identify and incrementally improve existing infrastructure and deployment patterns

Qualifications

• Typically requires a degree in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) and minimum 8 years prior relevant experience or an Advanced Degree in a related field and minimum 5 years of experience
• Proficiency with Python
• Strong experience with AWS (EKS, IAM, VPCs, networking)
• Hands-on Kubernetes experience operating production workloads
• Experience managing Kafka (or Redpanda) in production environments
• Proficiency with Terraform for infrastructure as code
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (GitLab, GitHub Actions, or similar)
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, reliability, and scaling
• Experience supporting production data pipelines or ML systems
• Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Thanos, etc.)

Requirements

• Experience with Kafka Connect
• Experience with Rust or a willingness to learn it
• Familiarity with Dagster, Airflow or other modern ETL orchestration tools
• Background supporting ML/AI systems in production (MLOps)
• Experience optimizing infrastructure for performance and cost
• Familiarity with Iceberg, Spark, Elasticsearch and other large-scale data processing systems
• Experience working in hybrid infrastructure environments (cloud + on-prem Kubernetes)

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Three weeks of vacation for newly hired employees
• Generous 401(k) plan that includes employer matching funds and separate employer retirement contribution, including a Lifetime Income Strategy option
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Student Loan Repayment Program
• Life insurance and disability coverage
• Optional coverages you can buy: pet insurance, home and auto insurance, additional life and accident insurance, critical illness insurance, group legal, ID theft protection
• Birth, adoption, parental leave benefits
• Ovia Health, fertility, and family planning
• Adoption Assistance
• Autism Benefit
• Employee Assistance Plan, including up to 10 free counseling sessions
• Healthy You Incentives, wellness rewards program
• Doctor on Demand, virtual doctor visits
• Bright Horizons, child and elder care services
• Teladoc Medical Experts, second opinion program
• And more!