Lead Container Platform Engineer

 Role : Lead Container Platform Engineer - Digital Technology

Location : Hyderabad

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Sanofi is a global pharmaceuticals and biologics company headquartered in Paris, France, and a leader in the research and development, manufacturing, and marketing of pharmaceutical drugs principally in the prescription market. The firm also develops well-known over-the-counter medication. The company covers seven major therapeutic areas: cardiovascular, central nervous system, diabetes, internal medicine, oncology, thrombosis and vaccines. It is the world's largest producer of vaccines.  

Sanofi has recently embarked on a vast and ambitious digital transformation program. A first step to this transformation was bringing all IT, Digital and Data functions under a Global Chief Digital Officer reporting to Sanofi’s CEO. The new Digital organization is implementing a 3-year strategy that will drive business growth, operating income and cost efficiency from enterprise-wide agile digital transformation.   

The digital roadmap will facilitate the acceleration of R&D drug discovery, intelligent supply chain, manufacturing digital factory of the future and commercial performance, bringing better drugs and vaccines to patients faster, to improve health and save lives.   

It is our aspiration to be a leader in biopharmaceuticals, driven by world-class digital technology, to improve people’s lives everywhere.  We put our colleagues on the highest value work, where they can best build their industry leading technical and business expertise in digital technology (digital experience, automation, software defined networks, cloud technologies, integration technologies, network security, digital workplace).  We make Sanofi a great place to work with Digital capabilities.  We leverage the best and brightest leaders and technical talent to build systems, rearchitect business processes, generate value and drive competitive advantage.    

Lead Container Platform Engineer – Digital Technology 

Our Team 

The Container Platform Services team is dedicated to enabling secure, scalable, and automated container-based application delivery across the enterprise. Our mission is to provide a reliable Kubernetes platform that supports development teams from environment provisioning through production operations, ensuring consistent deployment standards and high platform availability. 

The team operates across the full container platform lifecycle, including cluster provisioning, platform automation, service integration, and operational support. We work closely with infrastructure, security, architecture, and application teams to deliver Kubernetes as a managed internal service in a regulated environment. 

As part of Digital Technology, the team provides Kubernetes as a platform service, supporting enterprise application modernization and enabling standardized deployment patterns across hybrid and bare-metal environments. 

Candidate Profile

The Lead Container Platform Engineer drives the architecture, delivery, and lifecycle management of an enterprise Kubernetes service supporting internal engineering teams across regulated environments. 

This role combines deep technical platform expertise with service ownership responsibilities. The Lead Engineer defines platform standards, guides cluster lifecycle strategy, supports complex production incidents, and mentors engineers contributing to the container platform service. 

The role focuses on delivering reusable platform capabilities that improve developer productivity, strengthen operational reliability, and ensure compliance with enterprise governance standards. 

Typical responsibilities include:

• Leading the design and operation of Kubernetes clusters in enterprise environments  

• Supporting large-scale bare-metal cluster deployments  

• Defining and governing GitOps-based platform configuration workflows  

• Extending Kubernetes through validated platform add-ons and integrations  

• Providing escalation-level (L4) platform support for internal consumers  

• Driving automation for infrastructure and service lifecycle operations  

• Monitoring upstream Kubernetes ecosystem roadmaps and assessing service impact  

• Collaborating with security, architecture, and infrastructure teams in regulated environments  

• Mentoring engineers and contributing to platform engineering standards and best practices  

Role Description

• Lead the design and implementation of an enterprise Kubernetes service offering  

• Define architecture standards across multi-cluster platform environments  

• Oversee deployment and operation of Kubernetes clusters across bare-metal infrastructure  

• Drive adoption of GitOps-based configuration management workflows  

• Provide L4 escalation support for platform consumers and complex production issues  

• Standardize cluster lifecycle automation and platform add-on delivery  

• Align platform capabilities with enterprise security and compliance requirements  

• Monitor upstream Kubernetes product roadmaps and anticipate service evolution needs  

• Contribute to platform reliability strategy and operational maturity improvements  

Skills

Required 

• Deep experience deploying and operating Kubernetes clusters in enterprise environments  

• Strong Linux platform engineering and administration expertise  

• Experience implementing declarative infrastructure and GitOps delivery models  

• Experience supporting multi-cluster Kubernetes environments at scale  

Nice to Have

• Rancher / RKE  

• OpenShift  

• ArgoCD / Flux  

• CoreOS  

• RHEL / Fedora  

• Bare-metal cluster operations  

• CSI / CNI integration experience  

• Cluster lifecycle automation tooling  

Communication & Leadership Skills

• Convey complex platform architecture concepts clearly and concisely  

• Adapt communication to technical and non-technical audiences  

• Operate autonomously while influencing cross-team platform direction  

• Mentor engineers and contribute to capability development within the team  

• Collaborate effectively with architecture, infrastructure, and security stakeholders  

Qualifications

• Typically 8–12+ years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or container platform operations roles  

• Including at least 3–5 years of hands-on Kubernetes experience in production enterprise environments  

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience  

• Master’s degree preferred but not required  

Relevant certifications (nice to have)

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)  

• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)  

• Red Hat OpenShift Certification  

• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)  

• Cloud provider Kubernetes certifications (EKS / AKS / GKE)