Platform Engineering & Internal Developer Platforms
Design and implementation of platform capabilities across cloud and on-prem environments, enabling standardized service delivery, infrastructure automation, and scalable engineering workflows.
Resume
Lior Abitbol
Staff/Principal Platform Engineer focused on developer experience, internal platforms, and AI-enabled engineering systems.
I build and lead platform capabilities that help teams ship faster through clear standards, automation, and governance-as-code.
Core Capabilities
Developer Experience (DevEx) & Tooling
Building developer-facing systems including Backstage-based portals, internal CLIs, validation frameworks, and workflow orchestration that reduce friction and improve onboarding and delivery velocity.
Governance-as-Code & Policy Enforcement
Embedding standards into engineering systems through policy-driven validation, change automation, secrets management, and auditability across infrastructure and application workflows.
Cloud & Automation (AWS)
Development of serverless and automation-driven systems using Python, Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, IAM, and CloudFormation to support scalable, event-driven platform capabilities.
AI-Augmented Engineering Systems
Applying AI tools and local/cloud LLMs to enhance development workflows, including policy-aware routing, code generation, and developer productivity improvements.
Technical Leadership & Cross-Team Influence
Leading architecture, defining standards, driving adoption, and mentoring engineers across teams, with a focus on building systems that scale beyond individual contributors.
Professional Experience
Experience across platform engineering, developer experience, and automation, focused on building systems that improve engineering velocity, enforce standards, and scale across teams.
- Designing and building platform capabilities and developer experience systems through open-source projects and structured experimentation, focused on governance, automation, and AI-augmented engineering workflows.
- Built Policy Mesh, an open-source AI control plane that provides governed, self-service access to local and cloud LLMs through policy-based routing, observability, auditability, and cost-aware decisions.
- Built StackLayer, a reproducible platform engineering environment used to validate Kubernetes, GitOps, observability, and developer platform patterns, enabling experimentation with self-service workflows and enterprise governance models.
- Developed repeatable AI-augmented engineering workflows that accelerate delivery while maintaining governance, quality, and reproducibility.
- Led Backstage from proof of concept to production as Freddie Mac's Internal Developer Platform, defining architecture, roadmap, backlog, and platform integration that improved service discoverability, onboarding, and workflow visibility.
- Architected and delivered a Change Management-as-Code platform on AWS that enabled engineering teams to programmatically manage the full ServiceNow change lifecycle through APIs and automation workflows.
- Integrated change automation into Terraform, Rafay, and CI/CD delivery pipelines, reducing manual processes and enabling standardized deployment workflows across engineering teams.
- Represented the Principal Engineering organization in cross-functional initiatives spanning engineering, product, and delivery organizations, driving alignment on platform architecture, testing strategy, and workflow standardization.
- Developed platform governance tooling in partnership with the HashiCorp Vault team, providing policy enforcement, auditability, and self-service secrets management capabilities.
- Built platform automation and validation tooling for Rafay-managed Kubernetes environments, integrating operational validation directly into delivery workflows.
- Led multiple engineering teams totaling 20+ engineers responsible for enterprise automation platforms, hybrid cloud provisioning, developer-facing self-service capabilities, and internal platform tooling.
- Served as product owner and technical leader for Freddie Mac's enterprise automation platform (VMware vRealize), defining roadmap, governance, and self-service capabilities supporting hybrid cloud provisioning and platform operations.
- Reduced infrastructure provisioning times from 1-3 days to under 2 hours by designing and implementing end-to-end automation integrated with ServiceNow change management, approval workflows, and CMDB lifecycle tracking.
- Established enterprise automation standards and CI/CD frameworks using Ansible and Jenkins, improving release velocity, reducing manual intervention, and enabling consistent platform operations across teams.
- Partnered across engineering, enterprise architecture, security, and platform organizations to deliver scalable platform capabilities aligned with governance, compliance, and operational requirements.
- Designed and implemented a platform visibility and reporting system using Python and Django, aggregating infrastructure and CMDB data to provide actionable insights into resource utilization, ownership, automation adoption, and platform health.
- Led engineering and operations for an enterprise private cloud platform supporting approximately 4,000 virtual machines across geographically distributed datacenters, delivering standardized infrastructure services and self-service capabilities to internal engineering teams.
- Designed and delivered Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and XaaS platform offerings, enabling automated provisioning of fully configured, operationally compliant, and micro-segmented Windows and Linux environments.
- Architected and implemented end-to-end platform automation integrating ServiceNow, VMware NSX, Active Directory, Citrix NetScaler, Tripwire, Infoblox, and IPAM systems, enabling automated provisioning, compliance enforcement, lifecycle management, and decommissioning workflows.
- Developed internal platform applications using Python and Django that provided cloud metrics, compliance reporting, CMDB correlation, ownership tracking, and operational visibility for engineering and leadership stakeholders.
- Created a reusable automation framework for software-defined networking using VMware NSX, abstracting APIs and network constructs into shared Python libraries that accelerated development and adoption of network automation capabilities across teams.
- Led cross-functional delivery across engineering, operations, architecture, and vendor teams, overseeing platform roadmap execution, release governance, prioritization, escalation management, and operational support within regulated financial environments.
- Managed and supported enterprise infrastructure platforms spanning Windows Server, virtualization, Active Directory, DNS, backup, and disaster recovery services within a regulated financial environment.
- Provided technical leadership to an offshore engineering team of eight engineers, overseeing operational guidance, escalation management, mentoring, and change-control execution.
- Introduced automation and reporting capabilities using Python, C#, Perl, QlikView, and ETL pipelines, reducing manual effort while improving visibility into infrastructure operations and service performance.
- Developed dashboards and data models that combined infrastructure and CMDB data, providing engineering leadership with actionable insights into platform health, resource utilization, and service ownership.
- Progressed through roles in desktop, systems, and infrastructure engineering, building a foundation across enterprise platforms and operational environments.
- Led and mentored engineering teams, coordinated infrastructure initiatives, and served as a liaison across operations, support, and business stakeholders.
- Developed early automation and reporting solutions using scripting and application frameworks to improve operational efficiency, data visibility, and system management.
Education
M.S., Information Systems - Stevens Institute of Technology
Graduate study in systems, information architecture, and technology management.
B.S., Information Technology - American InterContinental University
Undergraduate foundation in software, infrastructure, and applied IT practices.
A.A.S., Electronics Engineering Technology - Technical Career Institutes
Technical grounding in electronics, systems, and engineering fundamentals.
Contact
Interested in working together?
I focus on platform engineering, developer experience, and AI-enabled engineering systems, particularly where teams need to improve delivery speed while maintaining strong governance, standards, and operational control.
Open to discussing Staff/Principal roles, consulting, and platform-focused initiatives.