Senior Platform Engineer (DevX)

K2 is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, unlocking performance levels previously out of reach across every orbit. Backed by $450M from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alpine Space Ventures, and others – with an additional $500M in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers – we’re mass-producing the highest-power satellite platforms ever built for missions from LEO to deep space.

The rise of heavy-lift launch vehicles is shifting the industry from an era of mass constraint to one of mass abundance, and we believe this new era demands a fundamentally different class of spacecraft. Engineered to survive the harshest radiation environments and to fully capitalize on today’s and tomorrow’s massive rockets, K2 satellites deliver unmatched capability at constellation scale and across multiple orbits.

With multiple launches planned through 2026 and 2027, we're Building Bigger to develop the solar system and become a Kardashev Type II (K2) civilization. If you are a motivated individual who thrives in a fast-paced environment and you're excited about contributing to the success of a groundbreaking Series C space startup, we’d love for you to apply.

The Role

Our enterprise software team builds the digital backbone that powers K2 Space’s satellite design, manufacturing, and mission operations. We develop tools that connect engineering, production, and mission control into a seamless ecosystem, enabling our hardware to get from concept to orbit faster than ever before.

As we continue to grow, we’re looking for a Senior Platform Engineer on our Enterprise Information Systems team, you must possess strong technical skills and a sense of empathy for your fellow engineers. You will work closely with other talented engineers, architects and senior stakeholders to design, implement, and deliver on our roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Build self-service integration capability for Amazon EKS functionalities through abstractions. Enabling scoped segmentation, governed namespace, automated workload scaling, multi-tenancy, adaptive ingress/egress, and traceable traffic
• Build a consistent application deployment process to enable both AI-assisted general application development and specialized application development work
• Promote AI adoption in a secure and consistent model while supporting AI operational needs
• Establish AI guardrails, observability, and governance
• Build guardrails and out-of-the-box platform functionalities for a golden path development model, accelerating application go-live with low-friction adoption of platform tooling
• Lead long-term platform roadmap incorporating AI capabilities and AI operations
• Engineer resilient traffic paths (timeouts, retries, circuit breaking, failure isolation) and harden them via chaos tests, automated remediation, and MTTR reduction
• Drive observability standards so end-to-end request paths and applied policies are visible (source, identity, route, outcome, saturation, cost) across environments
• Provide approachable docs & diagnostics (guides, diagrams, “why can't this connect?” flows) to shorten support loops
• Optimize performance & cost (latency budgets, cross-AZ transfer, IP consumption, LB efficiency) and act on anomalies
• Steward code lifecycle and adoption including versioning, safe migrations, deprecations, usage telemetry, and proactive pruning of unused resources
• Mentor engineers and partner with adjacent teams to embed application abstractions into golden paths, raising organizational fluency and consistency
• Build automated policies and processes to ensure good code deployment practices, code hygiene, and good code test practices

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science (or equivalent) and 8+ years of experience building and operating distributed/platform systems with production Kubernetes/EKS ownership
• Comfortable performing PoCs to evaluate new technology: AI platforms, AI models, and new products
• Proficiency in at least one language (Go, TypeScript, Python, C#) and disciplined SCM workflows (branching, reviews, automated gates)
• Working knowledge of Karpenter, Istio, ArgoCD, and KEDA for Amazon EKS
• Working knowledge of CI/CD build pipelines with GitHub or GitLab
• Competence in observability & SLOs (metrics, tracing, structured logs, L4/L7 telemetry, end-to-end request path, visibility into applied policies, SLI/SLO definition & enforcement)
• Experience with infrastructure as code and delivery: Terraform or CDK, GitOps (GH Actions, GitLab CI), progressive/canary rollouts, policy-as-code integration
• Experience with AI-assisted development processes and understanding of how to navigate the benefits and challenges of leveraging AI to accelerate deliverables

Nice to Have

• Hands-on production experience (architecture through operational support) with Karpenter, Istio, ArgoCD, and/or KEDA
• Experience with chaos engineering, tooling, and automated remediation frameworks
• Familiarity with cost-optimization tooling for cross-AZ transfer, IP consumption, or load balancer efficiency
• Experience mentoring engineers or driving platform adoption across multiple teams

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary range for this role is $165,000 - $200,000 + equity in the company
• Salary will be based on several factors including, but not limited to: knowledge and skills, education, and experience level
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical/dental/vision/ coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and many other perks

If you don’t meet 100% of the preferred skills and experience, we encourage you to still apply! Building a spacecraft unlike any other requires a team unlike any other and non-traditional career twists and turns are encouraged!

If you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

Export Compliance

As defined in the ITAR, “U.S. Persons” include U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (i.e., Green Card holders), and certain protected individuals (e.g., refugees/asylees, American Samoans). Please consult with a knowledgeable advisor if you are unsure whether you are a “U.S. Person.”

The person hired for this role will have access to information and items controlled by U.S. export control regulations, including the export control regulations outlined in the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR). The person hired for this role must therefore either be a “U.S. person” as defined by 22 C.F.R. § 120.15 or otherwise eligible for a federally issued export control license.

Equal Opportunity

K2 Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with K2 Space is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.