Staff Platform Engineer

Role Description

PadSplit is looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to provide technical leadership for our platform infrastructure and backend architecture as we continue to scale our marketplace. This role will drive platform strategy, improve system reliability and developer productivity, and partner across engineering teams to build secure, scalable solutions that support the company's long-term growth.

We're looking for a highly experienced engineer who excels at solving complex technical challenges and influencing engineering direction across multiple teams. You bring deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and backend architecture, while balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution. You are a collaborative leader who enjoys mentoring others, driving technical excellence, and building systems that create lasting business impact.

Responsibilities

• Platform Strategy: Define and drive the technical roadmap for platform infrastructure, reliability, and scalability initiatives.
• Architecture Leadership: Design and review complex system architectures that support company growth and evolving business needs.
• Technical Direction: Establish engineering standards, best practices, and technical patterns across multiple teams.
• Reliability Ownership: Improve system observability, incident response processes, and operational excellence across the platform.
• Cross-Team Influence: Partner with Engineering, Product, and Design leaders to align technical investments with business priorities.
• Mentorship & Coaching: Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance that elevates engineering capabilities across the organization.
• Platform Development: Build and improve backend services, infrastructure tooling, and shared platform capabilities.
• Risk Management: Identify technical debt, scalability risks, and operational vulnerabilities before they become business constraints.

Qualifications

• Platform Expertise: Extensive experience designing and operating large-scale backend platforms and distributed systems.
• Django Mastery: Deep expertise building, scaling, and modernizing production Django applications.
• Cloud Architecture: Expert-level experience architecting and operating cloud environments within AWS.
• Systems Design: Proven ability to design resilient, secure, and scalable systems that support significant business growth.
• Database Leadership: Advanced knowledge of Postgres architecture, performance optimization, and data modeling.
• Operational Excellence: Experience building observability, monitoring, incident management, and reliability practices.
• Technical Influence: Demonstrated success driving engineering decisions and influencing technical direction across teams.
• Mentorship & Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts and develop other engineers.

Compensation

$175,000 - $200,000 a year. Compensation is based on the role's scope, market benchmarks, the person's expertise and experience, and the impact of their contributions to our business goals.

Notice to Applicants

PadSplit participates in E-Verify. All new employees are required to complete an I-9 form and be authorized to work in the United States. Employment is contingent upon successful completion of the E-Verify process.

PadSplit is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.