Platform Engineer, Security (Senior/Staff)

Pallet; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 195,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, Vision, and Dental benefits

401k

Paid vacation

Job summary

Pallet is building AI infrastructure for logistics in San Francisco, seeking a founding engineer to shape security and platform foundations from the ground up. This hands-on role involves writing production code, designing systems, and setting defaults the company will rely on for years.

You’ll join a team with experience from Scale AI, DoorDash, and Rippling, delivering secure, reliable, and scalable infrastructure across regions with high ownership and significant impact.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software, backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering experience.
• Experience shipping production systems.
• Experience building security-sensitive systems, including authentication, authorization, secrets management, or infrastructure security.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, containers, networking, and distributed systems.
• Experience designing platforms, tooling, or abstractions that other engineers depend on.
• Comfortable moving from a blank document to a production deployment with minimal oversight.
• High ownership and strong engineering judgment.
• You write code every day and want to continue doing so.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the core platform services that power Pallet’s AI systems and developer workflows
• Design and implement authentication, authorization, secrets management, and access control systems
• Build infrastructure that operates reliably across regions and environments with clear isolation boundaries and disaster recovery capabilities
• Improve observability, monitoring, and operational tooling for production systems
• Develop internal platforms and abstractions enabling quick product engineering without compromising security or reliability
• Partner with AI and product teams to support model training, evaluation, and inference infrastructure
• Identify systemic risks and eliminate major operational, security, and reliability issues
• Own projects from architecture through production rollout

Skills

Backend engineering

Security-driven

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Authentication & access control

Production-grade coding

Ownership

Daily coding

Tools

PostgreSQL

Node.js

TypeScript

GCP

Docker

Job description

About Pallet

Pallet is building AI Agents to transform the physical economy, a $12 trillion global TAM. We've raised $50M from top investors, including General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Bain Capital Ventures.

Our mission is to increase the efficiency of the global supply chain by automating the manual workflows that slow supply chain teams down. Our flagship platform provides end-to-end visibility, and control.

As companies across the physical economy look to drive efficiency, many are turning to Pallet to lead the way. With deep supply chain expertise and cutting-edge AI capabilities, we’re positioned to build the next $10B company powering the physical economy.

Join us and work alongside leaders from Google, DoorDash, YC, and more to shape the future of supply chain technology.

Compensation and Work Details

$195,000 - $265,000

Full-time / Onsite (5 days/week)

About The Role

Pallet is building AI infrastructure for logistics: systems that coordinate real warehouses, freight networks, and supply chains. We’re looking for a founding engineer to build the security and platform foundations of the company from the ground up.

This is a hands‑on software engineering role. You will write production code, design infrastructure, and establish the systems that make Pallet secure, reliable, and scalable. The decisions you make today will become the defaults the company operates on for years.

Security at Pallet is not a separate function or compliance layer. It is a design constraint embedded directly into the systems we build. We want someone who naturally asks:

• What happens when this fails?
• Who should have access to this?
• How do we reduce the blast radius?
• Can we eliminate this problem entirely?
• And then builds the answer.

You’ll work alongside engineers who trained production AI systems at Scale AI, built logistics infrastructure that powers millions of deliveries at DoorDash, and scaled financial tooling used by thousands of businesses at Rippling. Small team. High ownership. Large surface area.

What You’ll Do

• Build and maintain the core platform services that power Pallet’s AI systems and developer workflows
• Design and implement authentication, authorization, secrets management, and access control systems
• Build infrastructure that operates reliably across regions and environments with clear isolation boundaries and disaster recovery capabilities
• Improve observability, monitoring, and operational tooling so engineers can confidently understand and debug production systems
• Develop internal platforms and abstractions that allow product engineers to move quickly without compromising security or reliability
• Partner with AI and product engineering teams to support model training, evaluation, and inference infrastructure
• Identify systemic risks and eliminate entire categories of operational, security, and reliability problems
• Own projects from architecture through production rollout

Who You Are

• 6+ years of software, backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering experience
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and a track record of shipping production systems
• Experience building security-sensitive systems, including authentication, authorization, secrets management, or infrastructure security
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, containers, networking, and distributed systems
• Experience designing platforms, tooling, or abstractions that other engineers depend on
• Comfortable moving from a blank document to a production deployment with minimal oversight
• High ownership and strong engineering judgment
• You write code every day and want to continue doing so

Nice To Haves

• Experience at an early-stage startup where you helped define foundational technical decisions
• Experience building multi-region or highly available systems
• Experience supporting AI/ML infrastructure or model-serving platforms

Our Tech Stack

• Database: PostgreSQL
• Backend: Node.js + TypeScript, Encore for server-side development and managed DevOps, hosted on GCP
• LLMs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (foundation models), Browserbase (browser automation)
• Frontend: React + TypeScript, hosted on Vercel

Compensation

The estimated salary range for this role is $195,000 – $265,000, depending on experience and skill set. In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity, benefits, and opportunities for growth. Final compensation will be determined based on a combination of factors, including experience, qualifications, and location.

Our Benefits

• Health, Vision, and Dental benefits
• Take-what-you-need Paid Vacation
• Life Insurance and Accidental Insurance
• Short-Term Disability Coverage
• Generous salary and equity for all staff
• 401k option; helping you save for the future
• Paid parental leave to support growing families
• Yearly learning and development stipend
• Commuter benefits for Bay Area and New York employees
• Uber ride stipend if you ever have to work late in the office
• Remote office home stipend to get you comfy in your space for remote employees
• Free professional headshot
• Daily catered lunches and dinners provided in office
• Complimentary On-Site Gym: Our SF office has a fully equipped gym
• Onboarding trip to one of our offices if you work remotely
• Monthly happy hours
• Annual Company Offsites; our last one was in Palm Springs CA

Workplace Policy

We are an in-person company. Our offices in San Francisco, New York City and London are where ideas get built, decisions get made, and the team gets stronger. We have invested in making them genuinely great places to spend your day, with catered lunches, monthly happy hours, and people who care about the work and each other.

Most of our team works in office five days a week. For select roles, we hire remotely across the U.S. Remote employees come to one of our offices for their first week to onboard and meet the team, and we cover the full trip.

Every role is different. Travel expectations are always shared upfront in the job description and confirmed in your first call with us.

Equal Opportunity

Pallet is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We make all employment decisions based solely on merit. We provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, disability status, or any other applicable legally protected characteristic. We prohibit any form of discrimination or harassment. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including hiring.

Candidate Privacy Notice

Please review Pallet’s Candidate Privacy Notice here.

Accommodations

Pallet complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as amended by the ADA Amendments Act, and all applicable state or local laws. We will reasonably accommodate qualified individuals with a disability during the application process and throughout employment as required by law.

If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please contact us at [e-mail].