Founding Engineering Manager, Platform

Storm2; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 225,000 - 275,000; Full time

Job summary

Storm2 is seeking a platform leader to own and scale the infrastructure and internal platform for a hypergrowth environment in San Francisco. You will oversee reliability, observability, and production excellence while building tooling that accelerates engineering teams.

Ideal candidates have experience in high-growth startups, leading platform or infrastructure teams, and a drive to build from zero. This role is hands-on, with ownership from day one and a path to leadership as the platform

Qualifications

• Experience in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment.
• Built systems and infrastructure that support meaningful scale.
• Comfort operating across cloud infrastructure, networking, databases, containers, and distributed systems.
• Owned reliability, on-call, or SRE functions.
• Cares about developer productivity and enabling engineers to move faster.
• Led teams or shown ownership and mentorship, ready for leadership.
• Enjoys building from zero rather than inheriting mature environments.

Responsibilities

• Owns infrastructure, developer productivity, SRE, and production excellence.
• Scale platform across AWS and Railway and drive reliability and observability.
• Build internal platform and tooling to accelerate engineering teams.
• Define how platform should scale as the company grows and hires.
• Remain hands-on and contribute to technical decision-making.

Skills

Infrastructure leadership

SRE leadership

Observability

Developer productivity

Production excellence

AWS

Railway

Tools

AWS

Railway

Job description

San Francisco, CA, five days per week in office

$225,000 to $275,000 + performance bonus + equity

Build the platform that powers the next phase of hypergrowth.

Storm2's client is one of the fastest-growing companies in commercial insurance.

Over the last year, the business has grown 100x and is adding roughly 1,000 new customers every month. With AI at the centre of the product, they're rebuilding insurance from the ground up and creating a category-defining company in the process.

The next challenge isn't finding growth. It's building the infrastructure, developer tooling, and production discipline required to support it.

That's where you come in.

The Role

Most platform leadership roles are about maintaining what already exists.

This one is about building.

You'll take ownership of a two-person platform function and help scale it into a cornerstone of the engineering organisation. You'll own infrastructure, developer productivity, SRE, and production excellence while helping define how engineering operates during a period of extreme growth.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in high-ownership environments and enjoys solving ambiguous problems before there is a playbook.

Whether you're already an Engineering Manager or a senior platform/infrastructure leader looking to step into a management role, we're far more interested in builders than title history.

What you’ll own:

• Scaling and evolving infrastructure across AWS and Railway.
• Building the internal platform and developer tooling that allows engineering teams to move faster.
• Establishing world-class SRE, incident management, and production support practices.
• Improving reliability, observability, and operational excellence across hundreds of services.
• Partnering closely with engineering leadership to determine how platform should scale as the company grows.
• Hiring and growing the platform organisation from a small founding team into a larger function.
• Remaining hands‑on and close to technical decision‑making.

You Might Be a Fit If

• You've worked in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment.
• You've built systems and infrastructure that supported meaningful scale.
• You're comfortable operating across cloud infrastructure, networking, databases, containers, and distributed systems.
• You've owned reliability, on-call, or SRE functions.
• You care deeply about developer productivity and enabling other engineers to move faster.
• You've led teams before, or you've naturally taken ownership, mentored engineers, and are ready to move into leadership.
• You enjoy building from zero rather than inheriting mature environments.