DevOps & platform engineer

What does a devOps & platform engineer do?

A DevOps and platform engineer builds the tools and systems that move software from a developer's laptop to production.

You write pipelines, manage cloud infrastructure as code, and keep live services running.

In a Singapore organisation, the role sits in an engineering, infrastructure or cloud team. Banks, government agencies, technology firms, logistics companies and e-commerce businesses all hire for it.

You work with software engineers, QA engineers, security teams and architects. Platform engineers treat developers as their customers and build internal tools that developers can use without asking for help.

What the work involves

• Build and fix CI/CD pipelines that test, package and release applications.
• Write Terraform or similar code to create and change cloud servers, networks and clusters.
• Watch dashboards and alerts, then trace slow responses or failures to their cause.
• Automate repeat tasks such as server setup, patching and environment creation with scripts.
• Work with developers on release plans, rollbacks and fixes after an incident.
• Review security settings and access rules, and fix gaps found in scans or audits.

Pay in Singapore

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Skills a devOps & platform engineer needs

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DevOps & platform engineer job description

We are hiring a DevOps and platform engineer to run the build, release and cloud infrastructure for our software teams.

You will design CI/CD pipelines, manage environments with infrastructure as code, and keep production reliable. You will work in an agile team with developers, testers and security staff, and you may join an on-call rota.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for application releases.
• Provision and manage cloud infrastructure using infrastructure as code.
• Run and improve container platforms, including Docker images and Kubernetes clusters.
• Set up monitoring, logging and alerting, and tune alerts so that they point to real problems.
• Respond to incidents, find root causes and write post-incident reviews.
• Automate manual operations with Bash, Python or Go scripts and small internal tools.
• Apply security controls such as secrets management, access rules and vulnerability scans in the pipeline.
• Build proofs of concept to test new tools and platforms before the team adopts them.
• Plan capacity and track cloud costs with engineering and finance teams.
• Write runbooks and guides so developers can deploy and troubleshoot on their own.

Requirements

• Diploma or degree in computing, information technology or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Typically 2 to 5 years in operations, systems or software roles. Junior posts may accept less.
• Hands-on skill with Linux, shell scripting, Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Terraform or another infrastructure as code tool, and with at least one major cloud (AWS, Azure or GCP).
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools such as GitLab CI, Jenkins or GitHub Actions, and with monitoring tools such as Grafana or Datadog.

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DevOps & platform engineer career path

Most people enter through software development, systems administration or cloud support.

From there you can move deeper into platform design or into reliability work, then into technical leadership.

1. Junior DevOps engineer

   Entry

   You maintain pipelines, handle routine deployments and follow runbooks. A senior engineer reviews your infrastructure changes.

2. DevOps engineer

   Mid · SkillsFuture title

   You design and run build, release and deployment automation for a team. You take part in agile delivery and build proofs of concept for new tools.

3. Senior DevOps or platform engineer

   Senior

   You own the platform used by several teams. You set standards for pipelines, infrastructure code and monitoring, and you mentor others.

4. Lead platform or SRE engineer

   Lead

   You set the technical direction for infrastructure and reliability across a department. You work with architects and managers on cost, risk and tooling choices.

Steps marked "SkillsFuture title" follow the career pathway in the SkillsFuture Skills Framework. The others are titles commonly used in Singapore.

Related jobs and their pay

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DevOps & platform engineer interview questions

We wrote these questions from the skills this job needs. They are not an official question bank.

1. Walk us through a CI/CD pipeline you would build for a web application that deploys to production several times a day.

   What a good answer covers

   • Names the stages: build, unit tests, security scan, package, deploy to staging, deploy to production
   • Explains how each stage fails fast and who gets told
   • Covers rollback or a canary release
   • Handles secrets outside the code repository

2. What is the difference between a container and a virtual machine, and when would you pick each?

   What a good answer covers

   • Containers share the host kernel; virtual machines run their own operating system
   • Compares start-up time, size and isolation
   • Gives a case for containers, such as stateless services
   • Gives a case for virtual machines, such as strict isolation or legacy software

3. A Kubernetes pod keeps restarting in a CrashLoopBackOff state. How do you find the cause?

   What a good answer covers

   • Checks pod events and describes the pod
   • Reads current and previous container logs
   • Looks at resource limits, failing health probes and missing config or secrets
   • Tests the image locally if needed
   • Fixes the cause and confirms the pod stays healthy

4. How do you manage Terraform state when five engineers work on the same infrastructure?

   What a good answer covers

   • Uses a remote backend with state locking
   • Separates state by environment or component
   • Restricts access to state because it can hold secrets
   • Reviews plans in pull requests before apply
   • Explains how to handle drift

5. A Linux server is slow. Which commands do you run first, and what do they tell you?

   What a good answer covers

   • Checks load, CPU and memory with top or similar tools
   • Checks disk space and disk input/output
   • Checks network connections and open ports
   • Reads system logs for errors
   • Narrows down to the process causing the issue

6. Write a Bash script outline that rotates log files older than seven days and reports failures.

   What a good answer covers

   • Uses find with a time filter, or logrotate where suitable
   • Checks exit codes and uses safe options such as set -euo pipefail
   • Quotes variables and handles file names with spaces
   • Sends or logs an alert on failure
   • Tests the script on a copy first

7. Explain how you would design a highly available web service on AWS, Azure or GCP in a single region.

   What a good answer covers

   • Spreads instances across availability zones behind a load balancer
   • Uses a managed database with failover
   • Uses auto scaling and health checks
   • Notes what a full region failure would still break
   • Mentions cost trade-offs

8. What would you put on a Grafana dashboard for an API, and which alerts would page someone at night?

   What a good answer covers

   • Shows request rate, error rate, latency percentiles and saturation
   • Pages only on problems users feel, such as high error rate
   • Sends lower-priority alerts to chat or a ticket queue
   • Links alerts to runbooks
   • Reviews noisy alerts regularly

9. How do you set a service level objective and an error budget, and what do you do when the budget runs out?

   What a good answer covers

   • Picks a measure users care about, such as successful requests or latency
   • Sets a target from user needs and past data
   • Treats the error budget as the allowed failure
   • Slows feature releases and prioritises reliability work when it is spent
   • Agrees the policy with product and engineering in advance

1. A release goes out at 6pm and error rates jump. You are on call. What do you do in the first 15 minutes?

   What a good answer covers

   • Confirms the impact and posts a status update to the team
   • Rolls back or disables the change before hunting for the root cause
   • Keeps a timeline of actions
   • Pulls in the owning developer if needed
   • Schedules a blameless review afterwards

2. Your cloud bill has risen sharply this month. How do you find out why and reduce it without hurting reliability?

   What a good answer covers

   • Breaks costs down by service, tag and team
   • Looks for idle or oversized resources and forgotten test environments
   • Checks storage, data transfer and logging volumes
   • Proposes changes such as right-sizing and schedules, and tests them in a lower environment
   • Sets budgets and alerts to catch the next spike

3. You use Claude Code to draft a Terraform module. How do you check it before it reaches production?

   What a good answer covers

   • Reads every line and applies only code that you can explain
   • Runs formatting, validation, linting and a plan review
   • Checks for open security groups, broad permissions and hard-coded secrets
   • Tests in a non-production account first
   • Keeps the change in a pull request for human review

1. Tell us about an outage or failed deployment you were involved in. What changed afterwards?

   What a good answer covers

   • Describes the impact and your own part honestly
   • Explains the root cause as well as the symptom
   • Names a concrete fix, such as a test, alert or process change
   • Shows a blameless attitude towards colleagues

2. Describe a time you persuaded developers to change how they build or release software.

   What a good answer covers

   • Starts from the developers' pain points
   • Shows evidence, such as a pilot or time saved
   • Keeps the new way easy to adopt
   • Describes how you handled disagreement and followed up

1. Application logs on your platform contain customer names and NRIC numbers. What do you do under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA)?

   What a good answer covers

   • Stops personal data from entering logs by masking or removing it at source
   • Limits who can read logs and sets a retention period
   • Encrypts logs in transit and at rest
   • Knows that the organisation must protect personal data and report certain breaches, and involves the data protection officer
   • Keeps production data out of test environments unless controls are in place

Common questions about a devOps & platform engineer job

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