Staff Engineer - Cloud Platform

Reference: 3124Posted: 2026-07-15Location: Austin, TXCompany: Realtor.comRecognized as the No. 1 site trusted by real estate professionals, Realtor.com has been at the forefront of online real estate for over 25 years, connecting buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights and expert guidance to find their perfect home. Through its robust suite of tools, Realtor.com not only makes a significant impact on the real estate industry at large, but for consumers, navigating the biggest purchase they will make in their life, by providing a user experience that is easy to use, easy to understand, and most of all, easy to make decisions.Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance.We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer – Cloud Platform to join our growing infrastructure organization. This is a high-impact opportunity to help build and shape our Cloud Platform team and the foundational capabilities that support engineers across the company. You will be a senior technical contributor responsible for defining cloud standards, scaling platform capabilities, and improving the developer experience for teams building and operating products on AWS.You will take ownership of critical cloud platform initiatives—including governance, automated remediation, internal developer tooling, and self-service infrastructure—with a direct mandate to influence how we manage our AWS footprint at scale. This role requires a RealOwnership mindset as you turn complex infrastructure and governance needs into reusable, developer-friendly platform capabilities. You will play a pivotal role in making our cloud environment more secure, reliable, observable, and cost-effective while helping establish the operating model for a growing Cloud Platform team.We believe in leveraging the best tools to solve problems faster. You will be expected to use AI coding assistants and LLMs to accelerate development velocity, generate boilerplate, document systems, and troubleshoot complex problems. This role requires the critical judgment to verify AI-generated outputs for security, performance, and accuracy, allowing you to focus on high-impact architectural and platform challenges.What you’ll do:Cloud Platform Architecture & StandardsDefine and evolve reusable cloud platform patterns for AWS infrastructure, production Kubernetes, account governance, networking, identity, security, and operational readiness.Lead the design and implementation of infrastructure-as-code modules, templates, and reference architectures using Terraform, CloudFormation, or CDK.Establish practical platform standards that balance developer autonomy with security, reliability, compliance, and cost requirements.Partner with engineering leaders and technical teams to assess platform needs, make architecture tradeoffs, and guide adoption of shared capabilities.Cloud Governance & Automated RemediationImplement and maintain cloud governance controls for security, tagging, resource lifecycle, account configuration, and compliance across AWS environments.Build and extend policy-as-code and automated remediation capabilities using tools such as Cloud Custodian, AWS Organizations, AWS Service Control Policies, or equivalent technologies.Create reporting, detection, and remediation workflows that identify cloud risk, configuration drift, orphaned resources, and cost issues before they become operational problems.Work with Security, Finance, and Engineering to translate governance requirements into automated, developer-friendly controls.Internal Developer Platform & Paved PathsBuild and improve self-service platform capabilities that allow engineering teams to provision and operate infrastructure without unnecessary manual intervention.Run and extend internal developer portal capabilities such as Backstage, including service catalogs, plugins, onboarding workflows, and platform documentation.Integrate infrastructure-as-code, policy checks, security validation, and operational readiness into delivery workflows to create paved paths for engineering teams.Develop reusable tooling, automation, and diagnostics that reduce developer friction and improve platform adoption.AWS & Kubernetes Platform EngineeringDesign, provision, and operate production-grade AWS infrastructure, including EKS, EC2, RDS, VPC, IAM, S3, Lambda, Fargate, Route 53, and related platform services.Define governance and operational patterns for Kubernetes clusters, including access control, workload security, networking, upgrades, observability, and lifecycle management.Support reliable containerized workloads using Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, and related cloud-native technologies.Partner with application and infrastructure teams to improve deployment reliability, disaster recovery readiness, and operational resilience.FinOps, Observability & ReliabilityDrive cloud cost optimization through rightsizing, utilization analysis, reserved capacity, Savings Plans, spot usage, autoscaling, and workload lifecycle management.Build cost controls, dashboards, alerts, and reporting that help teams understand resource consumption and make cost-conscious architecture decisions.Improve platform observability using tools such as Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent technologies.Contribute to incident response, post-incident reviews, runbooks, and reliability improvements for shared platform capabilities.Technical Leadership & CollaborationProvide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams through architecture reviews, design guidance, documentation, and hands-on delivery.Mentor engineers in infrastructure automation, cloud governance, platform engineering, and operational best practices.Build alignment across Engineering, Security, Finance, and other business partners while communicating technical concepts to diverse audiences.Maintain an active coding footprint in Python, Go, Java, Bash, or similar languages used to build platform automation and internal tooling.What you’ll bring:Experience & Expertise8+ years of experience in cloud platform, DevOps, infrastructure, SRE, or software engineering roles with significant infrastructure ownership.4+ years of hands-on experience designing, provisioning, and troubleshooting AWS infrastructure in production environments.3+ years of experience managing production-grade Kubernetes or Amazon EKS environments.Demonstrated experience building reusable platform capabilities, cloud governance systems, internal tooling, or self-service infrastructure used by multiple engineering teams.Experience influencing technical standards and architecture across team boundaries without relying on formal management authority.Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.Technical SkillsCloud & Infrastructure: AWS, EKS, EC2, RDS, S3, VPC, IAM, Lambda, Fargate, Route 53, AWS Organizations, and related cloud services.Kubernetes & Containers: Kubernetes, EKS, Docker, Helm, cluster governance, workload security, networking, and lifecycle management.IaC & Automation: Terraform preferred; CloudFormation, CDK, Terragrunt, Ansible, Python, Go, Java, or Bash.CI/CD & GitOps: Argo CD, CircleCI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or comparable delivery platforms.Governance & Security: Cloud Custodian, AWS Service Control Policies, policy-as-code, IAM, RBAC, secrets management, vulnerability management, or comparable controls.Developer Platforms: Backstage, service catalogs, internal developer portals, self-service infrastructure, platform APIs, or paved-path design.Observability & Operations: Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, distributed systems monitoring, incident response, and post-incident analysis.Preferred QualificationsDirect experience with Cloud Custodian, Backstage, AWS SCPs, or FinOps practices.Experience with Istio or another service mesh, including secure service-to-service communication and traffic management.Experience with multi-account, multi-region, hybrid-cloud, or regulated environments.Experience building automated remediation, policy enforcement, or cloud cost-management systems.Certifications such as Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS), AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional, or AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional.Professional QualitiesStrong communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly.Collaborative approach to working across engineering, security, finance, product, and business teams.Self-motivated and comfortable solving ambiguous problems in a growing platform organization.Data-driven decision-making with empathy for developer experience.Practical judgment about when to standardize, when to provide flexibility, and how to drive adoption of shared platform capabilities.RealOwnership mindset with a focus on durable systems, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.How We Reward YouRealtor.com is committed to investing in the health and well-being of our employees and their families. Our benefits programs include, but are not limited to:Inclusive and Competitive medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverageFamily forming benefits13 Paid HolidaysFlexible Time Off8 hours of paid Volunteer Time offImmediate eligibility into Company 401(k) plan with 3.5% company matchTuition Reimbursement program for degree and non-degreed programs1:1 personalized Financial Planning SessionsStudent Debt Retirement Savings Match programFree snacks and refreshments in each office locationDo the best work of your life at Realtor.comHere, you’ll partner with a diverse team of experts as you use leading-edge tech to empower everyone to meet a crucial goal: finding their way home. And you’ll find your way home too. At Realtor.com, you’ll bring your full self to work as you innovate with speed, serve our consumers, and champion your teammates. In return, we’ll provide you with a warm, welcoming, and inclusive culture; intellectual challenges; and the development opportunities you need to grow.Diversity is important to us, therefore, Realtor.com is an Equal Opportunity Employer regardless of age, color, national origin, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status as a disabled veteran and/or veteran of the Vietnam Era or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, Realtor.com will provide reasonable accommodations for otherwise qualified disabled individuals.