Founding Platform Engineer

Job Description

Founding Platform Engineer

Location: Tribeca, New York City (100% Onsite)

Salary: $190,000 – $260,000 + Competitive Equity

Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent

The Opportunity

Are you an experienced Platform Engineer or Backend Engineer who enjoys solving complex engineering challenges and building infrastructure that operates at serious scale?

We're partnering with an exciting, high-growth AI technology startup in New York looking to appoint its first dedicated Platform Engineer .

This is a fantastic opportunity to take complete ownership of a sophisticated data platform, working directly with the CTO to design, build and scale the infrastructure supporting the company's next phase of growth.

With ambitious plans to scale significantly further, we're looking for someone who combines exceptional software engineering fundamentals with deep expertise in distributed systems, data infrastructure and performance optimisation .

This isn't a traditional infrastructure maintenance position. You'll be expected to design solutions, write production-quality code and take ownership of complex engineering challenges from start to finish.

The Role

As Founding Platform Engineer, you'll become the technical owner of the company's core data infrastructure and platform architecture.

Working closely with the CTO and a small team of Product Engineers, you'll help define the technical roadmap and ensure the platform continues to scale efficiently.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Designing, building and scaling high-performance distributed systems and data infrastructure.
• Taking ownership of the platform's architecture, reliability, scalability and performance.
• Developing real-time data pipelines capable of processing extremely high volumes of information.
• Building infrastructure designed to support up to one trillion processing jobs per month .
• Optimising large-scale data ingestion, processing and retrieval.
• Designing and improving database architectures using ClickHouse and PostgreSQL.
• Profiling and tuning database performance, including query optimisation, memory utilisation and storage structures.
• Developing efficient systems capable of joining and aggregating billions of records in real time.
• Evaluating and implementing technologies such as Kafka and lower-level programming languages where appropriate.
• Building internal services and tooling to improve platform efficiency and reliability.
• Using AI-powered development tools to support benchmarking, monitoring, debugging and software development.
• Working directly with the CTO to define infrastructure priorities and technical strategy.
• Writing high-quality production code and delivering improvements quickly in a fast-moving engineering environment.

What We're Looking For

We're interested in speaking with talented engineers who have strong backgrounds in backend engineering, infrastructure engineering or distributed systems.

Essential experience:

• 4–10 years of professional software engineering experience , ideally specialising in backend systems, infrastructure or platform engineering.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals with significant hands-on coding experience.
• Proven experience designing, developing and operating distributed systems.
• Experience working with large-scale data infrastructure or high-throughput processing systems.
• Strong understanding of database architecture, performance and optimisation.
• Experience developing scalable backend services and data processing pipelines.
• Ability to investigate and resolve complex performance bottlenecks.
• Experience improving the reliability and scalability of production systems.
• Comfortable taking ownership of technical architecture and engineering decisions.
• Ability to work independently in an environment without a predefined technical roadmap.
• A pragmatic, delivery-focused approach to solving engineering challenges.

Desirable experience:

• Hands-on experience with ClickHouse, PostgreSQL or Kafka at scale.
• Strong Python development experience.
• Experience with OLAP and OLTP database architectures.
• Knowledge of real-time data processing and streaming technologies.
• Experience profiling CPU, memory and database performance.
• Previous experience working within early-stage or high-growth technology startups.
• Experience using AI coding agents and automated development tooling.
• A strong academic background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics or Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Technology Environment

You'll be working with a modern engineering stack including:

Software Engineering: Python

Databases: ClickHouse, PostgreSQL

Data & Messaging: Kafka, Real-Time Data Pipelines

Architecture: Distributed Systems, OLAP/OLTP Databases

Engineering Tools: AI Coding Agents, Performance Profiling, Monitoring and Benchmarking

About You

We're looking for someone who genuinely enjoys building technology and solving difficult engineering problems.

You'll be someone who:

• Enjoys writing code and implementing the systems they design.
• Has a strong understanding of how distributed systems behave under significant load.
• Takes ownership of technical challenges without needing constant direction.
• Is comfortable making architectural decisions and explaining the reasoning behind them.
• Thrives in fast-moving startup environments where priorities can evolve quickly.
• Focuses on delivering practical solutions rather than overengineering.
• Enjoys working closely with founders and senior technical leadership.
• Is motivated by solving complex problems involving scale, performance and reliability.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

This is an excellent opportunity to join a rapidly growing technology startup and become a key technical contributor from an early stage.

You'll benefit from:

• Competitive base salary of $190,000 – $260,000
• Competitive equity package
• Opportunity to become the company's first dedicated Platform Engineer
• Significant ownership of infrastructure architecture and technical strategy
• Direct collaboration with the CTO and founding engineering team
• Opportunity to work on systems processing billions of records and large volumes of real-time data
• Exposure to challenging distributed systems and database performance problems
• The freedom to influence technology choices and engineering direction
• Opportunity to build infrastructure supporting the company's next phase of growth
• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• Retirement benefits, including 401(k) contributions

Location & Working Arrangements

This position is based in Tribeca, New York City , with an expectation of working onsite five days per week.

The company operates in a fast-paced startup environment with a strong emphasis on collaboration, technical ownership and rapid delivery.

Eligible visa transfers, including H-1B transfers, may be considered.

Interested?

If you're an experienced Platform Engineer, Backend Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer or Distributed Systems Engineer who enjoys building and scaling complex data platforms, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply today with your latest resume for a confidential discussion.