Staff Platform Engineer, Cloud Platform

Description

The company wants building and running software on its cloud to feel as good as or better than the best developer platforms engineers use on their own projects. Pushing code should be quick, a namespace or database should take minutes, and production should stay up without heroics. The platform is not there yet, and closing that gap is the job.

This is a Staff-level, hands-on role covering the whole cloud platform: the internal cloud itself, the foundations under it, the control plane developers use, and the runtime that keeps workloads healthy. You will write code, set technical direction, and raise the standard for the engineers around you.

The company is hiring a small number of very strong engineers. If you have built a scaled platform that people chose because it was the easiest path, this role is worth a conversation.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core platform capabilities end to end, from API design through production operations.
• Set technical direction for one or more platform areas and write the design documents the team builds from.
• Find the largest sources of developer toil and platform instability, and remove them with code and automation instead of process or extra headcount.
• Build golden paths so the correct way to ship is also the easiest way.
• Use AI tooling such as Cursor, Claude Code and agents as a routine part of your work, and make the platform usable by agents through APIs and MCP.
• Work with SRE on reliability, on-call and incident reviews, and hold the platform to measurable SLOs.
• Mentor senior engineers, review designs and code across teams, and set an example of engineering standards.
• Work directly with application teams to learn where the platform gets in their way, then fix it.

Requirements

• 8 or more years building and operating production infrastructure or platforms, including several years in a senior or staff role leading technically across teams.
• Deep hands-on experience running Kubernetes in production at scale, including cluster operations, multi-tenancy, autoscaling and upgrades.
• Strong software engineering in Go or a comparable language, writing production code rather than only configuration.
• Experience designing and running an internal developer platform, PaaS or cloud control plane that other engineers rely on.
• Expertise in infrastructure as code and declarative provisioning with Terraform, Crossplane, or Kubernetes operators and controllers.
• Solid knowledge of cloud networking, identity and security, preferably on Azure.
• A record of improving reliability through SLOs, observability and blameless incident practice.
• Strong product sense for developer experience, caring about CLI output, error messages and docs as much as architecture.
• The judgment to simplify: you would rather delete a system than add another.
• Clear written communication and the ability to win over a skeptical audience with a sound design.
• Experience with Istio or another service mesh, Gateway API, ArgoCD, Kargo, KEDA, Karpenter or Kyverno. This is a nice-to-have.
• Experience building or migrating a large platform with zero downtime for tenants. This is a nice-to-have.
• Experience with event streaming platforms such as Azure Event Hubs or Kafka. This is a nice-to-have.
• Experience with cell-based or multi-region architectures. This is a nice-to-have.
• Experience building MCP servers or other interfaces designed for AI agents. This is a nice-to-have.
• Experience with cloud cost optimization and FinOps data pipelines. This is a nice-to-have.
• Contributions to open source projects in the cloud native ecosystem. This is a nice-to-have.

Conditions

Salary range is $160,200, $333,400. This is a good faith estimate based on what a successful applicant might be paid under applicable state laws. The offer within that range depends on job-related factors and the geography of the selected candidate.

Hybrid role: you are expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week, or at a frequency set by your manager.

GM does not provide immigration sponsorship for this role. Do not apply if you will now or in the future need GM sponsorship, including company sponsorship, GM as employer of record on a government form, or any work authorization that requires a written submission or other immigration support from the company, such as H-1B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN or J-1.

The company is an equal opportunity employer, and candidates may be asked to complete a role-related assessment or a pre-employment screening before starting.

Benefits

• Incentive pay program with payouts based on company performance, job level and individual performance.
• Medical, dental and vision coverage, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits and life insurance.
• Paid vacation and holidays, tuition assistance, employee assistance program and GM vehicle discounts.