Staff Platform Engineer

Staff Platform Engineer

Cortex is the Engineering Operations Platform - mission control for the AI software factory. As AI multiplies how much teams ship, code stops being the bottleneck and everything around it becomes the constraint. Cortex gives engineering organizations the visibility, governance, and golden paths to move fast without runaway risk to reliability and security - across Catalog and Context Graph, Scorecards, Engineering Intelligence, Self-Service and Workflows, and AI Impact. We're a YC company, SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 certified, used by teams like Rapid7, Xero, BigCommerce, Skyscanner, LetsGetChecked, and H&R Block. AI-augmented engineering is the floor here, not a side experiment - Cortex engineers build on Cortex every day. We're fully remote and welcome candidates from anywhere in the US! We have all-company offsites a few times a year where we fly the whole team out to meet in person, build stronger relationships, kick off important projects, and have fun! We are a mighty group of 80 passionate individuals excited about building a product that developers love. We recently raised $60M in Series C Funding this year led by Scale Ventures (with participation from Sequoia, IVP, and others) to build the Future of Developer Experience.

Role Summary

As Staff Platform Engineer, you will own and define the architecture of Cortex's infrastructure and platform. Working closely with engineering leadership and product, you will lead the foundational platform work that keeps us scalable, reliable, and secure as we grow - the deploy pipeline, multi-tenant isolation, database stability, and the deployment and compliance capabilities (including dedicated / single-tenant instances and FedRAMP-class requirements) that our largest customers depend on.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture and best practices for the platform and infrastructure layer the product is built on
• Own the deploy pipeline and lead the move to a GitOps model (Argo) for fast, safe releases
• Design and harden multi-tenant isolation and blast-radius protection for top-tier customers, including the path to dedicated / single-tenant deployments
• Lead database stabilization and the platform work behind performance, availability, and safe migrations
• Build the infrastructure foundations for compliance-heavy and government deployments (encryption, authentication, boundary and data-flow design)
• Set the standard for observability, on-call, and operational readiness across engineering, and evangelize platform-first thinking
• Collaborate with leadership and product to translate platform capabilities into customer-facing offerings

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of hands-on experience designing, operating, and scaling high-performance production systems
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform)
• Strong database proficiency (e.g. Postgres) with experience in performance, availability, and migrations at scale
• Architectural judgment at the system and cross-team level - you reason about blast radius and the next class of failure (multi-region, scale step-changes) before it bites
• Working proficiency in at least one application language (JVM preferred) - comfortable going into the code to debug or ship a change where the infra and application layers meet
• Strong security mindset - IaC, secrets management, least privilege, and common appsec risks
• Fluent, critical use of AI in day-to-day engineering, reviewing AI output as carefully as a teammate's PR
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities, with a proven track record of setting technical direction others follow
• FedRAMP, FISMA, or other government / compliance deployment experience is a plus
• Previous experience at a hyper-growth startup is a plus

Compensation

• Starting Salary Range: $250,000.00 to $285,000.00
• Competitive Equity Package

* Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role is eligible for equity and benefits.

Perks & Benefits

• National medical, dental & vision insurance (we cover 100% for employees!)
• Unlimited PTO & flexible working hours
• 401k plan
• Gender-neutral parental leave
• $1000 yearly Learning & Development stipend
• $400 monthly perks stipend (use it on anything)
• Pet Insurance

Cortex is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Cortex is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please email View email address on click.appcast.io