Software Engineer (Platform)

Outtake; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision

Flexible PTO

Annual company retreats

Job summary

A leading AI startup in New York is seeking a platform engineer who will own the foundational systems relied upon by product engineers. This role requires designing and maintaining tools, optimizing for leverage, and envisioning durable foundations. Candidates should thrive in ambiguous environments and have experience building systems that enhance developer workflows. The position offers a collaborative workplace culture, flexible PTO, and comprehensive health benefits like fully covered medical, dental, and vision.

Qualifications

• Experience building and owning foundational systems relied upon by other engineers.
• Ability to thrive in ambiguous situations without needing full specifications.
• Understanding of the balance between ideal solutions and velocity.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain systems that product engineers rely on daily.
• Turn patterns into platforms and fix one-off solutions with enduring systems.
• Develop a vision for how engineers should work and translate it into code.

Skills

Building foundational systems

Thriving in ambiguity

Systemic fixes over one-off solutions

Collaboration with other engineers

Job description

The Role

This is a platform engineering role.

You shape how other engineers build. You will own the foundations that product engineers rely on every day. You’ll design and maintain the systems, tools, and primitives that determine how fast, safely, and confidently the team can ship. Your work directly influences developer workflows, reliability, and day-to-day engineering velocity.

You optimize for leverage. You will prioritize work that multiplies impact across the engineering org. Instead of solving the same problem repeatedly, you’ll turn patterns into platforms and one-off fixes into systems. The goal is to make it easier for engineers to move quickly and do the right thing by default.

You envision and build durable foundations. You will develop and evolve a point of view on how engineers should work, then translate that vision into code and systems. You’ll operate comfortably in messy, fast-moving environments and steadily turn them into something more solid without slowing the team down. This role expects you to balance long-term thinking with practical execution.

The Team

"The team you build is the company you build." — Vinod Khosla

Outtake is built by former founders and engineers from Palantir, Notion, Meta, Slack, and Datadog - people who’ve shipped real systems, made hard calls, and learned the cost of getting things wrong.

We care deeply about craft, slope, and truth-seeking. Work here is collaborative and demanding: people pair on hard problems, challenge each other in review, and give direct, thoughtful feedback. Ownership is real - individuals own problems end-to-end, from framing and decisions to execution and outcomes. Mentorship is intentional, not accidental; people take your growth seriously and expect the same from you. The drive is high: people here care a lot, push hard, and move fast, not because they’re told to, but because they want to.

We’re building Outtake as a long-term network of builders. The goal is simple - time spent here should compound. You should leave meaningfully better than when you arrived.

You

This role tends to excite people who like building the foundations of messy systems and get energy from enabling other engineers to do their best work.

You might be a fit if:

• You’ve built and owned foundational systems that other engineers depended on, and you’ve lived with the consequences of those decisions
• You ramp quickly, thrive in ambiguity, and don’t need problems fully specified before you start making progress
• You understand the tension between ideal solutions and velocity, and know when to pursue one over the other
• You instinctively look for leverage and prefer systemic fixes over one-off solutions
• You have a point of view on how engineers should work, and you’re opinionated about turning that into code, tooling, and defaults
• You’ve worked closely with other engineers or teams as an enabler, not just as an implementer

If you need a tightly defined scope and a fixed roadmap, this won’t be a fit.

If you want to help define and build the platform’s direction you’ll feel at home.

Bonus if you’ve:

• Built or owned internal platforms, developer tooling, or shared infrastructure
• Worked on agentic systems, LLM platforms, or large-scale data ingestion pipelines
• Been the person people go to when systems get weird or unclear

What Success Looks Like

What will engineers be relying on in 6 months that didn’t exist before?

The platform engineers who thrive here tend to spot leverage early, often in the form of friction in the developer experience, a brittle system, or a pattern repeating across teams. Within a few months, you’ve made that problem yours and turned it into something real: a platform capability engineers default to, an abstraction that removes an entire class of errors, or infrastructure that quietly unlocks faster product work. By this point, other engineers are moving faster because of decisions you made, without even thinking about it.

Eventually, you’re a clear owner of core parts of the platform, with a point of view on how engineers should work and why. Product teams trust the foundations you’ve built, and leadership relies on your judgment when deciding how the platform should evolve next.

Why Outtake

If you're choosing between us and another AI startup:

• We’re taking on the dark side of AI advancement - we protect people from threats that are amplified by rapid advances in AI.
• The problem space is evolving, and you won’t stop learning - scammers continuously adapt. The problems we’re solving are always changing and demand constant innovation.
• The impact is immediate and real - attacks stopped, fraud prevented, lives protected, and threats caught that humans alone would miss.
• The company is thriving - serious customers, real revenue, partnerships with frontier AI labs, and momentum that comes from shipping things people depend on.
• The people are exceptional - sharp thinkers, strong operators, and teammates you’ll want in your corner for the rest of your career.
• The upside is meaningful - we’re still early in our journey, and we're tackling a massive problem that's only getting bigger.

Life at Outtake

• Office: We are an in-person team (5 days a week, with flexibility as needed) working out of a stunning waterfront office in Brooklyn. Collaboration, speed, and clarity matter.
• Health: 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision for employees.
• Time Away: Flexible PTO. We trust adults to manage energy, not clock time.
• Culture & Team: Annual company retreats and regular in-person events.