Member of Technical Staff - Engineering Lead, Platform Foundations

Reflection; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Top-tier compensation

Stock options

Health & wellness benefits

Meals provided

Parental leave (22 weeks)

Unlimited PTO (US) / 30 days (UK)

Visa sponsorship

Team off-sites

Job summary

Reflection is seeking a Platform Foundations Lead to guide the foundational layer that supports all engineering work, including cloud infrastructure, networking primitives, security guardrails, and developer tooling.

You will build, mentor, and grow a high-performing team, define architectural directions across cloud, networking, security, and developer infrastructure, and manage cloud/vendor relationships while staying technically hands-on as needed.

Qualifications

• Experience building and growing infrastructure or platform teams while staying technically hands-on.
• Deep infra/platform engineering experience with ownership of production-grade systems at scale.
• Strong coding ability and credibility to earn the technical trust of a strong team.
• Expertise in cloud platforms, network engineering, security architecture, or developer tooling with knowledge across others.
• Fluency with Terraform/Pulumi, Kubernetes, CI/CD and observability tools.
• Experience negotiating and operating cloud/infrastructure vendor deals.
• Ability to guide strategy across multi-cloud, multi-team environments and partner with research/engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of infrastructure and platform engineers.
• Provide front-line leadership of the foundational platform including multi-cloud design, networking, identity and security, and developer infrastructure.
• Stay hands-on and contribute as an IC when needed.
• Manage day-to-day execution and prioritize the team’s work in a fast-paced environment.
• Guide technical and architectural decisions emphasizing scalability, security, and cost predictability.
• Collaborate with research and engineering teams and manage vendor relationships and deals.
• Raise the bar for technical judgment, prioritization, and execution in a fast-moving environment.

Skills

Leadership

Mentoring

Hands-on engineering

Cloud platforms

Networking

Security architecture

Developer tooling

Vendor management

System design

Tools

Terraform/Pulumi

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Bazel

Prometheus/Grafana/OpenTelemetry

Job description

Our Mission

Reflection is a research lab making intelligence open and accessible for everyone to use, customize, and build on. We build open models that let anyone control their intelligence and help shape the future of AI. Our mission: make intelligence open and accessible to all.

About The Role

Reflection's Platform Foundations team builds and operates the foundational layer every engineering team depends on — cloud and multi-cloud infrastructure, networking primitives, security guardrails, and developer tooling. The team defines the opinionated golden paths that make the safe, scalable, cost-predictable path also the easiest one to follow, so engineers can ship quickly without reinventing the foundation each time.

As Platform Foundations Lead, you'll provide front-line leadership of the team that builds this layer. You'll build, mentor, and grow a team of infrastructure engineers, guide the technical and architectural decisions across cloud, networking, security, and developer infrastructure, and work closely with every engineering team that builds on top of you. You'll stay close enough to the stack to make targeted contributions as an individual contributor and to maintain a deep understanding of the team's technical work. Managing cloud and infrastructure vendors and the important deals that come with them is a core part of the job.

What You'll Do

• Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of infrastructure and platform engineers. Coach and support your reports in understanding, and pursuing, their professional growth.
• Provide front-line leadership of engineering efforts to build the foundational platform — multi-cloud design, networking, identity and security, and developer infrastructure — and the golden paths and secure defaults that make the safe path the easy path.
• Stay hands‑on: become familiar with the team's technical stack enough to make targeted contributions as an individual contributor.
• Manage day‑to‑day execution: prioritize the team's work and manage projects in a highly dynamic, fast‑paced environment.
• Guide technical and architectural decisions, emphasizing scalability, robustness, security, and cost predictability — networking primitives (routing, DNS, load balancing, BGP), large‑scale Kubernetes, IAM and policy‑as‑code, CI/CD and build systems, and observability.
• Work closely with our research and engineering teams, and manage the cloud and infrastructure vendor relationships and deals the platform depends on.
• Raise the bar for technical judgment, prioritization, communication, and execution in a fast‑moving environment.

What We're Looking For

• Experience building, mentoring, and growing infrastructure or platform teams while staying technically hands‑on. (Comfortable growing into leading a team of ~10 quickly if you haven't managed at that scale before.)
• Deep infrastructure or platform engineering experience, with real ownership of production‑grade systems at scale.
• Strong coding ability and the credibility to earn the technical trust of a strong team.
• Deep expertise in at least one of: cloud platforms, network engineering, security architecture, or developer tooling — with working knowledge across the others, and the ability to learn the rest.
• Fluency with the modern infra toolkit: Terraform/Pulumi, Kubernetes, CI/CD and build systems (e.g. Bazel), and observability (Prometheus/Grafana/OpenTelemetry).
• Experience managing cloud and infrastructure vendors, including negotiating and operating important deals.
• Ability to guide strategy and drive execution across a multi‑cloud, multi‑team environment, and to partner effectively with research and engineering teams.

What We Offer

We believe that to make intelligence open and accessible to all, you need to start at the foundation. Joining Reflection means building from the ground up as part of a talent‑dense team. You will help define our future as a company, and help define the future of open foundational models.

We want you to do the most impactful work of your career with the confidence that you and the people you care about most are supported.

• Top-tier compensation: Salary and equity structured to recognize and retain our talent globally.
• Stock options: Everyone who joins and contributes to Reflection's success gets to share in the upside through stock options.
• Health & wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life, with an annual wellness allowance.
• Meals: Lunch and dinner are provided in the office daily.
• Life & family: 22 weeks paid parental leave for all new birthing and non‑birthing parents, including adoptive and surrogate journeys.
• Vacation days: Unlimited paid time off in the U.S. and 30 days in the U.K.
• Sponsorship support: We sponsor visas to help exceptional talent join our team and support long‑term immigration pathways where applicable.
• Team building: We have regular off‑sites, happy hours, and team celebrations.

Export Control Notice

This position may require access to technology or source code subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Any offer of employment for this role may be conditioned on the Company's ability to provide the candidate with access to such technology or source code in compliance with applicable U.S. export control laws, which may require the Company to seek government authorization.