Senior Platform Engineer: AI-Driven Backend & Infra

Instrumental, Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 221,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision

Dental

Commuter plans

Parental leave

Job summary

Instrumental is hiring a Senior Platform Engineer who will own the platform layer—services, pipelines, and infrastructure that the rest of engineering relies on. The ideal candidate operates independently on ambiguous problems, makes sound architectural decisions with limited guidance, and raises the bar through hands-on contributions.

Experience with Python or Go and data processing pipelines is a plus. Bay Area base salary ranges from $170,000 to $221,000, with growth opportunities during the

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend or platform engineering experience, startup experience preferred.
• Ability to own production systems from design to deployment and operations.
• Strong communication and collaboration across engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the full software development lifecycle across design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operations
• Build and evolve core platform services with emphasis on maintainability and reliability
• Improve system simplicity, observability, security, and incident response
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity
• Identify and prioritize new tools and technical debt based on ROI
• Collaborate across teams to ensure platform meets product, AI, and edge needs

Skills

Backend/platform ownership

Production systems ownership

Python or Go

Data processing pipelines

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Python

Go

Job description

Instrumental is hiring a Senior Platform Engineer who will own the platform layer—services, pipelines, and infrastructure that the rest of engineering relies on. The ideal candidate operates independently on ambiguous problems, makes sound architectural decisions with limited guidance, and raises the bar through hands-on contributions.

Experience with Python or Go and data processing pipelines is a plus. Bay Area base salary ranges from $170,000 to $221,000, with growth opportunities during the