Staff Platform Engineer

About the Role

We are looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to join Horizon3’s Internal Platform Team (IPT) and shape the cloud and delivery foundations behind NodeZero.

You will lead complex, cross-team initiatives; define platform direction; improve developer workflows; and establish standards that make our systems secure, reliable, and easier to operate. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous problems and building reusable platform capabilities.

What You’ll Do

Platform Strategy, Delivery & Operations

• Lead the design and evolution of AWS, Kubernetes/EKS, and shared platform services.

• Define architecture for infrastructure automation, service delivery, regional capabilities, and ephemeral environments.

• Build reusable platform capabilities, self-service workflows, and release-safety practices.

• Evolve infrastructure-as-code and declarative approaches, including Terraform and Crossplane-related capabilities.

• Improve platform reliability, observability, security, performance, and operability.

• Participate in on-call and incident response, leading post-incident improvements.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Drive high-impact initiatives across multiple teams and balance reliability, security, cost, developer experience, and delivery speed.

• Establish platform standards, reduce technical debt, and guide design decisions.

• Partner with feature teams to turn platform needs into durable solutions.

• Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across Engineering.

• Improve documentation, runbooks, interfaces, and self-service paths.

• Communicate clearly and build alignment across Platform, Application Engineering, Data Engineering, Product, Program Management, and Security.

What You’ll Bring

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years in platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, DevOps, or software engineering with substantial production-platform ownership.

• Deep experience designing and operating cloud platforms, preferably AWS.

• Strong Kubernetes experience, including production operations, networking, reliability, and troubleshooting.

• Strong infrastructure-as-code and automation experience with Terraform, Crossplane, or comparable tools.

• Experience operating CI/CD and delivery infrastructure.

• Strong understanding of IAM, secrets, networking, ingress, and least privilege.

• Experience with distributed-systems observability and operational practices.

• Proficiency in Go and Python for platform services, developer tooling, or automation.

• Demonstrated success leading complex initiatives across multiple teams.

• Excellent communication, mentoring, and technical-influence skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Multi-region or multi-environment SaaS platform experience.

• Internal developer platform, declarative API, or Platform-as-a-Service experience.

• GitLab CI/CD, self-hosted runners, OpenTelemetry, or Datadog experience.

• Ephemeral-environment, automated-provisioning, or platform-lifecycle experience.

• Security-sensitive, regulated, or cybersecurity experience.

• Startup or high-growth company experience.

Our Platform Stack

• AWS, Kubernetes, and EKS

• Terraform and Crossplane-related tooling

• GitLab and CI/CD pipelines

• OpenTelemetry and Datadog

• Linux, containers, networking, IAM, and secrets-management systems

• Go and Python for automation and platform services

Exact tool matches are less important than strong platform fundamentals, sound judgment, and end-to-end ownership of production systems.

What Success Looks Like

• Engineering teams move faster through reliable platform capabilities and self-service workflows.

• Shared services are secure, observable, maintainable, and easier to operate.

• Regional and ephemeral environments deploy consistently with less manual effort.

• Platform consumers have clear interfaces, documentation, and support paths.

• You are trusted to lead complex platform decisions and develop other engineers.

Why Join Us

You’ll shape the platform behind a rapidly evolving cybersecurity product used by organizations around the world, working with engineers, security practitioners, and technical leaders on problems with broad technical impact.

Travel

Occasional travel may be required for company onsite meetings and team collaboration.

Perks of Horizon3

• Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.

• Base salary range: $199,750 - $270,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.

You Belong Here

Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, or any other legally protected status by law.