Platform CV Template and Example

Professional

A strong platform CV shows the systems you built and the effect they had on the teams using them. Hiring managers look for concrete numbers: deployment times, cost changes, incident rates and adoption of the tooling you shipped. This page gives you a complete example and explains how to write each section.

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Platform CV example (Professional template)

A full-page example built for this role. Use it as a structure reference — replace every line with your own experience.

Skills hiring managers look for in a Platform

Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS)
Terraform and infrastructure as code
CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins)
Argo CD and GitOps workflows
Helm and Kustomize
Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
Incident response and SLOs
Go or Python scripting
Internal developer portals (Backstage)
Networking and IAM fundamentals
CKA or equivalent certification

What to include in a platform CV

A platform CV needs four things a general software CV often leaves out: the scale you worked at, the teams you served, the tooling you owned and the measurable change you produced. Platform work is judged by its effect on other engineers, so every section should make that effect visible.

Lead with a summary of three or four lines. State your years of experience, your main stack and one or two headline results. Then list skills grouped by category rather than as one long block, because recruiters and hiring managers scan for specific tool names.

Experience comes next, in reverse chronological order. Three roles with three to four bullets each is enough for most mid-career applications. Finish with education, certifications and any platform projects that show ownership beyond your day job.

How to write platform experience bullets

Each bullet should describe a system you changed, the method you used and the result. The result is what separates a strong platform CV from a list of tools. Where you cannot give a percentage, give a time, a count or a cost figure.

Avoid bullets that describe routine maintenance. 'Managed Kubernetes clusters' tells the reader nothing. 'Upgraded three production clusters from 1.24 to 1.27 with zero downtime' tells them you understand risk, planning and rollback.

Name the scale: number of services, clusters, repositories, teams or monthly active users.
Name the tools only where they matter to the outcome, not as a keyword dump.
Quantify the change: deployment time, cost, incident count, adoption rate, onboarding time.
Show the before and after where possible, for example 'from 22 minutes to 4 minutes'.
Include one bullet per role about reliability or on-call work, since platform teams carry that load.

Skills hiring managers scan for

Platform job adverts are usually a list of tools, and screening often starts with a keyword match. Put the tools you genuinely use in a dedicated skills section so they are easy to find, and keep the list to 10 to 14 items.

Beyond tools, hiring managers look for evidence of three capabilities: infrastructure as code at scale, delivery pipelines that other teams depend on, and observability or incident practice. A certification such as CKA or Terraform Associate helps with automated screening but does not replace project evidence.

Infrastructure as code: Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation.
Container platforms: Kubernetes, ECS, Nomad.
Delivery: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Argo CD, Flux, Helm.
Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog.
Languages for tooling: Go, Python, Bash.
Practice: SLOs, error budgets, on-call rotations, post-incident reviews.

Common mistakes in platform CVs

The most common mistake is writing a DevOps tool list instead of a record of outcomes. A page of technologies with no results reads as a skills inventory, not a career. Hiring managers cannot tell whether you configured a cluster once or ran twenty of them in production.

The second mistake is vagueness about ownership. Platform teams are often shared-service teams, so it is worth saying whether you designed, built, operated or advised. 'Contributed to' and 'led' mean different things and interviewers will probe the difference.

The third is length. Two pages is the practical limit for most mid-career applications. Cut older roles down to one or two bullets, and remove tools you no longer want to work with.

Formatting and tailoring

Use a single-column layout with clear headings. Applicant tracking systems parse single-column documents far more reliably than multi-column designs with text boxes or tables. Keep dates in a consistent format such as 'Mar 2022 – Present'.

Tailor the skills section and the order of your bullets to each advert. If a role emphasises cost optimisation, move the cost bullet to the top of each entry. If it emphasises developer experience, lead with portal or pipeline work.

Save as PDF unless the advert asks for another format, and name the file with your name and the role, for example 'morgan-ellis-platform-engineer.pdf'.

Platform CV — frequently asked questions

How long should a platform engineer CV be?

Two pages is the right length for most mid-career platform engineers. Use the first page for your summary, skills and current role, then let older roles take less space. If you have more than ten years of experience, three pages is acceptable, but only if every line still adds evidence.

Do I need a CKA or Terraform certification on my CV?

Certifications help with keyword screening and give you a shared vocabulary in interviews, but they do not carry much weight on their own. A CKA alongside two or three bullets showing real cluster operations is far stronger than a certificate with no project evidence behind it.

What numbers should I put in platform CV bullets?

Use whatever you can measure honestly: deployment frequency or lead time, number of services or clusters, cloud spend change, incident or page volume, onboarding time and adoption rates. If you do not have a percentage, a count or a time range still works, such as 'across 45 services' or 'within one quarter'.

How is a platform CV different from a DevOps CV?

The two overlap heavily, and many employers use the titles interchangeably. Platform roles tend to emphasise internal products and developer experience, such as portals, golden paths and self-service tooling, while DevOps roles often emphasise pipelines and release engineering. If you are applying for both, adjust your summary and lead bullets to match the advert.

Should I list every cloud provider and tool I have touched?

No. List the tools you would be comfortable being interviewed on and that appear in the adverts you are targeting. A focused list of 10 to 14 skills reads as depth, while a list of 30 tools reads as surface-level familiarity and invites questions you may not want.