Staff Platform Engineer

Senior/ Staff Platform Engineer

Fora is the modern travel agency, redefining what it means to be a travel advisor in today's world. We're a next-generation platform that provides a comprehensive, business-in-a-box solution—combining cutting-edge technology, personalized training, a vibrant community, and exclusive industry partnerships—all designed to empower anyone with a passion for travel to turn that passion into a thriving business. Whether you're a travel enthusiast or an experienced professional, Fora equips you with everything needed to launch and scale a successful travel advisory business, making it the ultimate way to align work with your lifestyle.

At the heart of Fora is our mission: to power the next generation of travel entrepreneurs to transform their love for travel into a fulfilling full-time or part-time career, offering unparalleled flexibility, autonomy, and support. We believe that everyone, from seasoned travel professionals to first-time entrepreneurs, can build a career that's both profitable and aligned with their passions.

Our platform combines innovative technology with the human touch, offering:

• Best-in-class training programs to help agents develop expert knowledge, no matter their starting point.
• A powerful suite of tools for booking, client management, and marketing, ensuring agents can focus on delivering exceptional travel experiences.
• Access to an engaged community of fellow advisors, fostering collaboration, support, and shared learning.
• Exclusive partnerships with top travel brands, providing access to competitive rates, perks, and experiences that elevate advisors' offerings.

Since our founding in 2021 by experienced travel entrepreneurs Henley Vazquez, Jake Peters, and Evan Frank, Fora has experienced rapid growth, expanding to a team of 180+ full-time employees based in downtown New York City. Earlier this year, we announced our $60 million Series B and C investment rounds, led by Thrive Capital and Insight Partners, with participation by previous investors including Forerunner and Heartcore Capital. This funding represents a vote of confidence in the enduring power of entrepreneurship, and secures our ability to build a category-defining travel brand. We have a vision for the future that leverages the best of humans and the best of technology to create the first truly unified platform for all travel needs - from staycation to the safari.

We're proud of the recognition we've received, including:

• LinkedIn's Top Startups List 2024
• Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies 2025 and 2023
• Built In 2025 Best Places to Work
• And several "top agency" awards from our fantastic partners including Virtuoso, IHG, Four Seasons, and more

Fora is a mission-driven company that believes in the power of entrepreneurship, community, and passion. As we continue to grow, we are looking for more talented and like-minded individuals to join our team - people who are excited about transforming the travel space and helping us scale our vision globally.

About The Role

We're looking for an experienced Senior/Staff Software engineer to lead and scale the foundational systems that power Fora's platform. In this role, you'll own the reliability, scalability, and developer experience of our infrastructure — including CI/CD pipelines, cloud architecture, observability systems, and core platform security. You'll partner closely with Engineering, and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure our systems are fast, secure, and built to scale with our business.

Our ideal candidate is a mission-aligned leader with a strong track record of building high scale and secure platforms, an understanding of devops, data pipelines and distributed systems, and a passion for scaling both products and teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Optimize database performance and reliability, managing PostgreSQL configurations, connection pooling, timeout settings, and query performance at scale.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines that enable rapid, safe deployments with progressive rollout capabilities and automated rollback mechanisms.
• Manage message queue infrastructure including RabbitMQ and Celery workers, ensuring optimal throughput and preventing memory pressure issues.
• Build developer tools and platforms that accelerate engineering velocity, including feature flag systems, development environments, and debugging tools.
• Implement infrastructure as code using Terraform, ensuring all infrastructure changes are versioned, reviewed, and reproducible.
• Architect and implement monitoring and observability solutions using Datadog, CloudWatch, and custom metrics to ensure comprehensive system visibility.
• Drive security and compliance initiatives, including secrets management, network segmentation.
• Partner with engineering teams to establish SLOs, implement proper error budgets, and ensure services meet reliability targets.
• Design and maintain our container orchestration layer, bonus if familiar with Kubernetes.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in engineering, at least 2 in platform engineering
• Strong experience with AWS services (EKS, RDS, ALB/ELB, SQS, CloudWatch, IAM)
• Proven track record with infrastructure as code tools (Terraform preferred)
• Experience with PostgreSQL administration including performance tuning, replication, and connection management
• Experience with message queue systems (RabbitMQ, Kafka, Celery, or similar)
• Proficiency with monitoring and observability tools (Datadog, Prometheus, or similar APM solutions)
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, feature flags)
• Understanding of security best practices including secrets management, network security, and compliance requirements
• Expertise with container orchestration in production environments, including cluster management, networking, and troubleshooting (Kubernetes preferred)
• Excellent communication skills with ability to explain complex infrastructure concepts to diverse audiences
• Experience with cost optimization and capacity planning for cloud infrastructure

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with high-traffic B2B2C platforms or marketplace architectures.

Compensation

Compensation for this role varies based on experience, with an indicative range of $155K–$225K + equity. Final compensation will depend on the level at which the candidate is hired, as we're considering multiple levels for this role.

• Unlimited vacation
• Health Insurance (including an option completely covered by Fora HQ)
• Dental & Vision Insurance
• Wellhub Memberships
• 401k plan with company match
• Commuter Benefits
• Supplemental Life Insurance
• Stock Options