Sr. Software Engineer (Platform)

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health, Vision, Dental

Commuter plans

Parental leave

Job summary

Instrumental Inc. is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to own the platform layer—services, pipelines, and infrastructure that powering our engineering teams in the Bay Area.

You will drive end-to-end production systems, improve reliability, observability, and security, and leverage AI-assisted tools to accelerate development velocity and iteration speed.

If you thrive in a hands-on startup environment and can influence engineering practices, apply to join our growing team.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in backend or platform engineering, startup experience required.
• Own production systems end-to-end from design to operations.
• Fluent in Python or Go; other backend languages a plus.
• Experience with data modeling and data processing pipelines.
• Leads AI tool adoption to improve productivity and outcomes.
• Strong communication and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own the full software development lifecycle across design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operations.
• Build and evolve core platform services with an emphasis on pragmatism, maintainability, and operational excellence.
• Improve system simplicity, reliability, security, observability, incident detection, and response.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity and iteration speed.
• Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new tools, technologies, and technical debt based on ROI.
• Collaborate across engineering teams to ensure platform capabilities meet product, AI, and edge system needs.

Skills

Backend engineering

Platform ownership

Startup experience

Communication

AI tooling adoption

Data modeling

Data pipelines

Tools

Python

Go

Job description

Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

Instrumental is hiring a Senior Platform Engineer who will take broad ownership of our platform layer: the services, pipelines, and infrastructure that the rest of engineering depends on. The ideal candidate will be able to operate independently on ambiguous problems, make sound architectural decisions with limited guidance, and raise the bar for the team through both their technical contributions and their influence on engineering practices. We are explicitly looking for someone who has already demonstrated sustained impact in a professional setting, ideally at a startup where they owned systems end-to-end.

What You’ll Be Doing

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

We’re Looking For Someone Who

• Has 5+ years of backend or platform engineering experience; startup experience required
• Takes full ownership of production systems — from design through deployment and operations
• Makes pragmatic, well-reasoned technical decisions and can articulate their tradeoffs
• Is fluent in Python or Go; experience with other backend languages is a plus
• Has experience with data modeling and data processing pipelines
• Leads the way in AI tool adoption on their teams to improve development productivity and outcomes
• Communicates clearly and collaborates effectively across teams

We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, supports each other, and is energized by having an impact. We value passion and the ability to learn — you’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t match the job description precisely!

The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $170,000-$221,000. In addition, job level and salary opportunities are evaluated during our interview process — we review each applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.

At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. Employees are expected to comply with company engineering, security, access control, and privacy policies, and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.