Staff Platform Engineer

Staff Platform Engineer

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Platform Engineer based in Germany.

This is a high-impact platform engineering role focused on owning and scaling the infrastructure behind a developer-focused software platform. You will take end-to-end responsibility for cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, networking, data systems, infrastructure as code, and deployment foundations. A major part of the role involves turning Bring Your Own Cloud and private-cloud deployments into reliable, scalable products rather than bespoke implementations. You will establish strong foundations for reliability, security, compliance, observability, and operational excellence as the platform grows. The position combines deep technical ownership with product thinking, giving you a direct influence on engineering priorities and company strategy. You will work closely with customers and a small, autonomous engineering team where initiative, pragmatism, and fast execution are highly valued. This opportunity is ideal for a seasoned platform, infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE leader who thrives in an ambitious startup environment.

Accountabilities

• Own and scale the cloud infrastructure supporting the platform, including compute, networking, and core data-layer services.
• Lead the development of Bring Your Own Cloud capabilities, including provisioning, upgrades, observability, and scalable customer-cloud deployments.
• Operationalize and productize Infrastructure as Code and GitOps foundations to enable a small engineering team to ship quickly and reliably.
• Establish reliability as a core product capability by defining meaningful Service Level Objectives and building trusted incident management processes.
• Own and scale critical data infrastructure, including PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, and ClickHouse.
• Drive infrastructure-level security and compliance initiatives covering areas such as SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, penetration testing, and enterprise security reviews.
• Make architectural and infrastructure decisions that balance scalability, reliability, security, performance, and development velocity.
• Partner with engineering and customer-facing teams to understand operational challenges and turn customer needs into practical platform improvements.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap and broader company strategy through strong ownership of key infrastructure decisions.
• Support the engineering organization during incidents, help unblock complex technical issues, and promote pragmatic operational practices.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, SRE, or related roles, with a strong track record of operating high-traffic production systems.
• Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production, combined with strong judgment around when Kubernetes is appropriate and when alternative approaches are better.
• Proven experience operating software in environments outside your direct control, such as Bring Your Own Cloud, single-tenant, on-premises, or air-gapped environments.
• Strong AWS expertise, with familiarity with GCP and Azure considered an advantage.
• Advanced experience with Terraform, including reusable modules, secure state management, and multi-account cloud architectures.
• Strong database expertise, particularly with PostgreSQL, including performance optimization, migrations under load, replication, and operational reliability.
• Practical experience with security and compliance programs such as SOC 2, ISO audits, penetration testing, and enterprise security reviews.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security, observability, incident response, deployment automation, and production operations.
• Familiarity with TypeScript and Node.js and the ability to understand application-level concerns from a platform perspective.
• Product mindset and developer empathy, with the ability to understand customer problems and build effective infrastructure solutions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proactive, pragmatic, and low-ego approach to collaboration, including willingness to step in during incidents and help teammates.
• High degree of autonomy, ownership, and adaptability in a fast-moving startup environment.
• Comfortable working effectively in a remote-first, distributed team.
• Based in Europe, with the role specifically listed for candidates in the Netherlands.

Benefits

• Competitive staff-level compensation of $140,000–$220,000, adjusted according to location.
• Equity participation, providing an opportunity to share in the long-term value created by your work.
• Remote-first working environment across eligible locations in Europe, North America, and LATAM.
• Significant autonomy and ownership over infrastructure architecture, platform strategy, and technical priorities.
• Opportunity to build foundational infrastructure for a rapidly growing developer-focused platform.
• Direct influence on product roadmap, engineering standards, and company strategy.
• Collaboration with a highly autonomous engineering team in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Opportunity to work on challenging infrastructure problems involving Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, Bring Your Own Cloud, databases, reliability, security, and compliance.