Remote Staff Platform Engineer - AI/Cloud Infra Lead

Robots and Pencils; Seattle (WA); Remote; USD 126,000 - 174,000; Full time

Job summary

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to define and lead platform engineering strategy across complex, multi-environment cloud systems. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who can own infrastructure end-to-end, drive DevSecOps and compliance, and serve as a technical leader on the engagements they support.

In this role, you will work as a key technical contributor on a cross-functional team, defining standards and owning platform reliability, performance, and security

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional DevOps or platform engineering experience.
• Expert scripting and programming skills (e.g., Python, Go, Java, Bash).
• Deep cloud expertise across at least one major platform.
• Expert Kubernetes and container orchestration skills.
• Expert IaC skills across multiple tools.
• Strong CI/CD architecture experience at scale.
• Strong DevSecOps experience including secrets management, compliance, and auditing.
• Experience with networking, IAM, security architecture, and zero-trust principles in cloud environments.
• Experience with service mesh, distributed systems, and microservices architecture.
• Strong experience with AI/ML platform infrastructure, including model serving and deployment, GPU workload orchestration, LLM gateway and observability, vector store infrastructure, and CI/CD for AI/ML systems.

Responsibilities

• Define DevOps strategy and lead infrastructure architecture across multi-environment, multi-region cloud systems.
• Architect and own scalable Kubernetes platforms and containerized infrastructure at scale.
• Own infrastructure as code strategy and standards across environments.
• Lead DevSecOps implementation including secrets management, compliance, auditing, IAM, and zero-trust networking.
• Drive platform reliability, performance SLAs, and cost optimization across production systems.
• Lead complex cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives.
• Own observability strategy and production reliability practices.
• Lead the design and operation of AI/ML platform infrastructure, including model serving and deployment, GPU workload orchestration, LLM gateway and observability, vector store infrastructure, and CI/CD for AI/ML systems.
• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace.
• Partner with engineering, product, and leadership to align platform strategy with business and delivery goals.
• Communicate complex infrastructure decisions and tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Lead design reviews, architecture discussions, and release readiness assessments.
• Establish platform engineering standards and best practices on the engagements you support.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, helping them grow their craft, confidence, and impact.
• Act as a technical escalation point on complex infrastructure and platform challenges.
• Evaluate emerging tools and technologies, recommending patterns that improve platform reliability and developer experience.

Skills

Platform engineering

DevOps

Kubernetes

IaC

CI/CD

DevSecOps

Python

Go

Java

Bash

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Docker

GitHub Actions

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to define and lead platform engineering strategy across complex, multi-environment cloud systems. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who can own infrastructure end-to-end, drive DevSecOps and compliance, and serve as a technical leader on the engagements they support.

In this role, you will work as a key technical contributor on a cross-functional team, defining standards and owning platform reliability, performance, and security