Senior Platform Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra's ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Transparency , Collaboration , Operational Excellence , Ownership , and Empathy. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

You will develop and own key parts of Phaidra's internal developer platform, including golden paths, GitOps workflows, and cloud-native foundations that product and ML teams depend on. The ideal candidate could be described as:

• Pragmatic and product-minded. You treat developer experience, reliability, and operational cost as first-class outcomes.
• Comfortable partnering across engineering, SRE, and security in an all-remote setting.
• Aligned with our values: Transparency, Collaboration, Operational Excellence, Ownership, & Empathy.

**We are seeking a team member based in the United States or Canada (Eastern and Central time zones preferred).

Responsibilities

1. Developer Platform
   • Own the delivery of a scoped set of developer platform capabilities end-to-end (design, implementation, rollout, iteration).
   • Build and evolve paved roads (golden paths, service templates, scaffolding) that make it easy to deploy, operate, and scale services.
   • Run tight feedback loops with engineers across product and ML teams; measure adoption and eliminate common friction points.
2. GitOps, CI/CD, and Delivery Workflows
   • Drive improvements to GitOps workflows via ArgoCD and Terraform automation via Atlantis.
   • Harden CI/CD on GitLab CI, including pipeline performance, safety, and developer ergonomics.
   • Design progressive delivery patterns (canary, blue/green) as reusable platform primitives.
3. Reliability + Operational Excellence
   • Contribute to SLI/SLO frameworks and shared observability primitives (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Tempo, OpenTelemetry).
   • Participate in the platform team's on-call rotation; reduce toil through automation and better system design.
   • Improve incident response and postmortem practice so learnings translate into systemic fixes.
4. Security Defaults + Platform Standards
   • Embed secure-by-default patterns into platform templates (secrets, IAM, RBAC, NetworkPolicies).
   • Partner with security on compliance posture (SOC 2, ISO 27001) without slowing delivery.
5. Infrastructure Foundations
   • Partner with infrastructure/SRE owners on Kubernetes and core cloud foundations (networking, storage, cluster/platform primitives) where it directly improves developer workflows.
   • Evolve cloud-native abstractions so the platform remains portable and resilient as our footprint grows (GCP today, with future optionality across providers).

Key Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or SRE
• Production experience operating in at least one major cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure)
• GitOps fluency with production experience (ArgoCD, Flux, or equivalent), including rollout, drift detection, and recovery patterns
• Experience building or operating key components of an internal developer platform (e.g., self-service deployment/operations workflows, golden paths/service templates, developer portals, platform APIs, or developer tooling)
• Infrastructure-as-code experience: Terraform plus a configuration system (Kapitan, Helm, Kustomize, or similar)
• Software engineering experience in a major high level language. Comfortable writing libraries, CLIs or APIs.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives across multiple teams

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience in organizations with distinct platform and productivity engineering functions.
• GitLab CI pipeline design and infrastructure operation at scale.
• Deep Kubernetes fluency, operating multi-cluster production environments and debugging at the node and controller level.
• Distributed tracing and advanced observability (OpenTelemetry, Tempo).

Nice-to-haves

• Hands-on AI/ML infrastructure at scale: GPU scheduling, distributed training, model serving, vector stores, or feature stores.
• Cost optimization and FinOps practices, especially for GPU and model-serving workloads.
• Service mesh and proxy patterns (Envoy, HAProxy, Istio, Nginx).
• Multi-cloud experience or cloud-agnostic abstractions (Crossplane, Terraform modules, etc.).
• Kubernetes operator development and deployment.

Our Stack

• Languages: Python, Go, Bash
• IaC & Config: Kapitan, Terraform, Crossplane
• Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes
• CI/CD & Delivery: GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis
• Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry

Onboarding

In your first 30 days...

• You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra and our product.
• You will spend time in the Infrastructure and Engineering orgs, learning how teams operate, interact, and approach problems.
• You will read the handbook and our onboarding materials to internalize Abstractions, Standards, Baselines, and Archetypes.
• You will set up your development environment and complete an onboarding exercise.
• You will learn team standards, release processes, and how we use GitOps and Kapitan.
• You will shadow the platform on-call rotation.

By your first 60 days...

• You will have a solid understanding of Phaidra's platform and how engineering and research teams consume it.
• You will have met with team members across Phaidra and started building collaborative relationships.
• You will have completed the onboarding exercise and shipped a first scoped platform improvement (golden path, GitOps change, or self-service tool).

By your first 90 days...

• You will be fully integrated into the team and collaborating effectively across the company.
• You will have participated in the on-call rotation and contributed improvements to reliability and operational practices.
• You will be comfortable with our tooling and drive a cross-team platform initiative with measurable developer impact.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

1. Meeting with Operations (30 minutes): The purpose of this interview is to meet you, learn more about your background, discuss what you are looking for in a new position and cover formalities around your application.

2. Hiring Manager interview (30 minutes): This is an introduction call with the hiring manager so that the candidate and the hiring manager can get to know each other better. It will mainly focus on your previous experience and technical background. This meeting is also meant to enable you to ask any questions about the team & role.

3. Technical Interview (60 minutes): This technical interview will involve candidate designing a developer-facing platform capability end to end.

4. Culture fit interview with one of Phaidra's co-founders (30 minutes): This interview focuses on alignment with Phaidra's values and the mutual cultural fit.

Base Salary

US Residents:

• Tier 1 (Largest highest-cost metros): 149,600 USD - 205,700 USD
• Tier 2 (Other major metros): 142,129 USD - 195,415 USD
• Tier 3 (Mid-sized metro areas): 134,640 USD - 185,130 USD
• Tier 4 (All other locations): 127,160 USD - 174,845 USD

Canada Residents:

• Tier 1 (Vancouver): 153,660 CAD - 211,280 CAD
• Tier 2 (Toronto): 143,410 CAD - 195,830 CAD
• Tier 3 (Montreal): 122,930 CAD - 169,020 CAD
• Tier 4 (Smaller cities / rural areas): 112,680 CAD - 154,930 CAD

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for equity. Final salary will be determined based on several factors, including a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, expertise, education and location. In some cases, final compensation may fall outside the posted range. Salary ranges are regularly reviewed and may be adjusted in response to market trends.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced, team-oriented environment where your work directly shapes the company's direction.
• We are a 100% remote company.
• Competitive compensation & meaningful equity.
• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.
• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).
• Unlimited paid time off, with a required minimum of 20 days per year.
• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).
• Flexible stipends to support your workspace, well-being, and continued professional development.
• Company MacBook.

Please note: Not all of Phaidra's benefits and perks listed above apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On being Remote

We take a thoughtful and intentional approach to remote collaboration. Inspired by pioneers like GitLab, we embrace proven best practices to foster an exceptional remote work environment. Our culture is documentation-first, and we prioritize asynchronous communication to support focus and flexibility across time zones. While we value independence, we stay closely connected through tools like Slack and video conferencing. Weekly all-hands meetings help us align and build strong relationships, and we regularly host virtual team-building activities and social events to maintain a sense of camaraderie.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra 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. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at View email address on ziprecruiter.com.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee's Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#LI-Remote

To be considered for any position at Phaidra, you must submit an online application. This role will remain open until it is filled.

Phaidra only hires individuals who are legally authorized to work in the specified location(s) above. We do not provide employment sponsorship. Candidates requiring visa sponsorship, either now or in the future, are not eligible for hire.

Candidates who advance beyond the initial screening stage will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in order to continue through the interview process.

All employment offers are contingent upon successful completion of employment authorization verification and applicable background checks, in accordance with local laws and company policies.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.