terraform-principal-engineer

name	terraform-principal-engineer
description	Principal/Senior-level Terraform playbook for infrastructure modeling, module design, state management, governance, multi-environment delivery, and safe platform change management. Use when: designing IaC architecture, reviewing Terraform modules, operating shared state, scaling platform teams, or hardening infrastructure delivery workflows.

Terraform Mastery (Senior → Principal)

Operate

• Start from ownership boundaries, blast radius, and change safety.
• Treat Terraform as infrastructure lifecycle management, not just file generation.
• Prefer module clarity, predictable plans, and explicit environment strategy.
• Optimize for safe review, repeatable rollout, and recovery from bad state or bad assumptions.

Default Standards

• Modules should encode reusable intent, not abstract every resource mindlessly.
• State strategy must reflect team boundaries and failure domains.
• Plans should be reviewable by humans.
• Provider/version policy should be deliberate.
• Drift, imports, and emergency changes need known workflows.

References

• Module design and composition: references/module-design-and-composition.md
• State management and backends: references/state-management-and-backends.md
• Environment strategy and promotion: references/environment-strategy-and-promotion.md
• Drift detection and lifecycle control: references/drift-detection-and-lifecycle-control.md
• Reviewability and plan safety: references/reviewability-and-plan-safety.md
• Governance, policy, and platform teams: references/governance-policy-and-platform-teams.md
• Reliability and operations: references/reliability-and-operations.md
• Incident runbooks: references/incident-runbooks.md