Principal Platform Engineer - Connected Aviation (Remote)

Senior Platform Engineer – Aviation Intelligence Team

As a Senior Platform Engineer on the Aviation Intelligence team within Collins Aerospace's Connected Aviation business unit, you will play an integral role in a high‑growth, high‑visibility area of the company. You will lead critical projects, coordinate with AI/ML teams, and support the data platform that powers our customer‑facing applications.

What You Will Do

• Own and evolve AWS infrastructure supporting the 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 teams 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 You Must Have

• Typically requires a STEM degree with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience, or an advanced degree with a minimum of 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.)

Qualifications We Prefer

• 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 with employer matching and additional retirement contributions
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Student loan repayment program
• Life insurance and disability coverage
• Optional coverages: 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 support
• Adoption assistance
• Autism benefit
• Employee assistance plan with up to 10 free counseling sessions
• Healthy You incentives and wellness rewards program
• Doctor on Demand and virtual doctor visits
• Bright Horizons child and elder care services
• Teladoc Medical Experts and second opinion program

Salary range: $107,500 – $204,500 USD.

Equal Opportunity Employer

RTX is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other applicable state or federal protected class. RTX provides affirmative action in employment for qualified individuals with a disability and protected veterans in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act.