Founding Staff / Principal Platform Engineer

The Onset; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

The Onset seeks a Staff or Principal Platform Engineer to own the AWS foundations from day one in a greenfield setup. You will design the core AWS platform, create account structures, VPCs, IAM, and security controls, and implement CI/CD and container deployment patterns.

You will shape observability, reliability, and operational standards to guide future engineering teams as the platform scales with the business.

Qualifications

• Strong AWS experience at production scale and multi-account environments.
• Proven ability to design secure IAM and networking foundations.
• Experience building observability and reliability into platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own AWS foundations from day one, including account structure and environment design.
• Build and maintain VPC architecture and networking patterns.
• Lead infrastructure as code with Terraform and CI/CD pipelines.
• Define security foundations, IAM controls and access policies.
• Shape deployment patterns for containerised workloads and deployment strategies.
• Establish observability and reliability standards for the platform.
• Make architectural decisions to guide future engineering teams.

Skills

AWS architecture

Production reliability

Observability

Networking design

IAM and security

CI/CD

Containers

Tools

Terraform

Job description

Founding Staff / Principal Platform Engineer

We’re working with an early-stage, well-backed technology company building its platform from the ground up.

They’re looking for a Staff or Principal-level engineer to own the AWS foundations from day one.

The role

This is not an environment you inherit.

You’ll help create it.

You’ll be responsible for designing and building the core AWS platform, including:

• AWS account structure and environment design
• VPC architecture and networking
• Terraform and infrastructure as code
• IAM, access controls and security foundations
• CI/CD and deployment pipelines
• Containerised workloads and deployment patterns
• Observability, reliability and operational standards
• The platform decisions that future engineering teams will build on

The environment is genuinely greenfield, so the expectation is that you can make good architectural decisions without needing an established platform team around you.

What we’re looking for

You’re likely operating at Staff or Principal level and have previously built AWS environments from scratch.

The strongest backgrounds will include experience with:

• AWS in production at meaningful scale
• Terraform
• Multi-account AWS environments
• Networking and VPC design
• IAM and security
• CI/CD
• Containers
• Production reliability and observability

The key differentiator is having built the foundations yourself, rather than only maintaining or extending an established environment.

Why consider it?

You’ll have real ownership over the technical foundations of the company.

The decisions you make early will shape how the platform scales, how engineers deploy software and how the broader engineering function operates as the business grows.