AI Platform Engineer (Cloud)

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

Job Summary

Absa Group's Chief Data Analytics and Applied AI Office (CDAIO) is seeking a motivated and technically capable Junior AI Platform Engineer (Cloud) to support the development, deployment, and operation of the cloud infrastructure underpinning the bank's enterprise AI capability.

This role is ideal for an engineer with foundational experience in cloud engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or infrastructure engineering who is looking to build expertise in AI platforms, cloud-native technologies, and enterprise-scale AI infrastructure.

The successful candidate will work alongside senior platform engineers, architects, security specialists, and AI engineers to support AI platform services across AWS, Azure, Databricks, Kubernetes, and emerging AI technologies. The role provides exposure to Generative AI, Agentic AI, MLOps, AI security, cloud cost management, and AI platform operations within a highly regulated banking environment.

Job Description

Key Focus Areas

• AI Platform Operations - Support the deployment, configuration, monitoring, and maintenance of AI platform infrastructure and services.
• Cloud Engineering - Assist with managing cloud environments across AWS and Microsoft Azure using Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tools.
• Platform Reliability & Monitoring - Support monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and operational support for production AI services.
• Security & Governance - Implement and maintain cloud security controls, identity management, secrets management, and compliance requirements.
• DevOps & Automation - Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and reusable deployment templates.
• Continuous Learning - Develop expertise in AI platform technologies including AWS Bedrock, Databricks, Azure AI Foundry, Kubernetes, and Agentic AI frameworks.

Core Responsibilities

Platform Engineering

• Assist in deploying and supporting AI platform components across AWS and Azure.
• Support Kubernetes-based workloads and containerized services.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform and cloud-native tooling.
• Assist with AI model serving environments, APIs, vector databases, and data services.
• Participate in platform upgrades, maintenance activities, and operational support.
• Create and maintain technical documentation and operational procedures.

DevOps & Automation

• Support CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or similar tools.
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and deployment activities.
• Assist with configuration management and deployment standardization.
• Contribute to reusable infrastructure modules and templates.

Monitoring & Operational Support

• Monitor platform health using Grafana, Prometheus, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, or similar tools.
• Respond to incidents and assist with troubleshooting activities.
• Support root-cause analysis and remediation activities.
• Assist with maintaining operational runbooks and support procedures.

Cloud Security

• Support implementation of IAM, RBAC, secrets management, and access controls.
• Assist in maintaining platform security configurations.
• Support vulnerability remediation and compliance activities.
• Follow enterprise security and governance standards.

AI Platform Support

• Gain exposure to AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, Databricks, Hugging Face, and MLOps tooling.
• Support deployment and operation of AI and Generative AI workloads.
• Assist with agentic AI environments and AI workflow automation.
• Work with senior engineers to support AI platform enhancements.

Minimum Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's Degree in:
  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Software Engineering
  • Data Science
  • Engineering
  • Mathematics
  • Related technical discipline

OR

• Diploma with relevant cloud and platform engineering experience.

Experience Required

• 1 to 3 years experience in:
  • Cloud Engineering
  • DevOps Engineering
  • Platform Engineering
  • Infrastructure Engineering
  • Systems Administration
  • Site Reliability Engineering

Exposure to:

• AWS or Azure
• Terraform or Infrastructure-as-Code
• Docker and Kubernetes
• Linux Administration
• CI/CD Pipelines
• Cloud Monitoring
• Scripting (Python, Bash, PowerShell)

Technical Skills

Cloud Platforms

• AWS
• Microsoft Azure

Infrastructure as Code

• Terraform
• ARM Templates
• AWS CDK (advantageous)

Containers & Orchestration

• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Helm

Monitoring

• Grafana
• Prometheus
• CloudWatch
• Azure Monitor

DevOps

• GitHub Actions
• Azure DevOps
• Jenkins
• Git

Programming & Scripting

• Python
• Bash
• PowerShell

Security Fundamentals

• IAM
• RBAC
• Secrets Management
• API Security
• OAuth 2.0 (advantageous)

Advantageous Exposure

Candidates with exposure to any of the following will be strongly preferred:

• AWS Bedrock
• Azure AI Foundry
• Azure Machine Learning
• Databricks
• Hugging Face
• Generative AI
• MLOps
• AI Agents
• LangGraph
• AutoGen
• Vector Databases
• FinOps
• OpenTelemetry
• Machine Learning Platforms

Education

National Certificate: Information Technology

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised