Sr Software Engineer (Platform Engineering)

Kard; New York (NY); Remote; USD 160,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

Kard is seeking a Developer Experience Engineer to streamline and optimize its internal developer platform. This critical role involves enhancing cloud infrastructure using AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform to improve developer workflows and reduce operational friction. You will lead technical decision-making, mentor engineers, and advocate for best practices in operational excellence, ensuring a seamless environment for delivering value.

Benefits

Flexible PTO

Health, Dental and Vision Insurance

401k with employer match

Company Offsites twice a year

Qualifications

• Expertise in AWS (EKS, Lambda, RDS, etc.) and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Terraform for infrastructure automation.
• Background in deploying CI/CD pipelines and incident management.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain developer experience platforms for reliable deployment.
• Architect and enhance Kard’s AWS infrastructure.
• Evaluate build vs. buy for internal platform needs and enforce standards.

Skills

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD

Incident Response

Developer Productivity

Problem-Solving

Communication

Job description

Kard is transforming customer loyalty with our rewards-as-a-service API platform. We empower our partners, from neobanks to financial institutions and beyond, to offer tailored rewards that celebrate customers' daily transactions. Backed by $30M from industry-leading investors and seasoned experts, we are reshaping the future of customer engagement.

About the Role

Streamline, automate, and optimize Kard’s internal developer platform to make building, deploying, and operating software fast, seamless, and reliable. You will focus on creating scalable infrastructure, improving developer experience, and reducing operational friction, ensuring engineers at Kard can deliver value quickly and with confidence.

This role is not just about building—it’s about making smart choices. You will evaluate build vs. buy trade-offs, leveraging automation, open-source tools, and third-party services to create cost-effective, user-friendly solutions. Your decisions will directly impact developer efficiency, infrastructure scalability, and Kard’s ability to innovate.

Your work will span AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD automation, and developer productivity tooling, keeping Kard’s infrastructure scalable, efficient, and secure. You will collaborate with engineering teams to improve observability, compliance, cost management, incident response, and deployment workflows, eliminating bottlenecks and reducing cognitive load. You will advocate for platform usability and developer ergonomics, ensuring Kard’s internal infrastructure accelerates, rather than hinders, product innovation.

Success in this role means outcomes over output. You will align platform decisions with business needs, ensuring Kard remains lean, efficient, and adaptable. Whether improving our multi-account AWS architecture, streamlining deployments, or enhancing security automation, your work will have a lasting impact on how Kard engineers build and deliver value.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain developer experience platforms that make deployment, operations, and observability easy and reliable.
• Architect and evolve Kard’s multi-account (”cell”) AWS infrastructure, ensuring it is secure, cost-efficient, and adaptable while improving usability through automation and self-service tooling.
• Evaluate build vs. buy for internal platform needs, leveraging open-source tools and third-party automation to reduce engineering burden.
• Develop and enforce standards, automation, and guardrails for infrastructure as code (Terraform), CI/CD, cost management, security, and compliance.
• Improve incident management, observability, and system resilience, ensuring fast recovery and high availability.
• Work closely with engineers across the company to reduce cognitive load, improve developer workflows, and accelerate product delivery.
• Drive the evolution of Kard’s cell-based multi-account architecture, making it more usable, flexible, and efficient.
• Enhance and automate feature flag management, database migrations, smoke testing, and operational tooling.
• Lead and participate in technical decision-making, integrating developer experience, scalability, and business impact.
• Mentor engineers and advocate for best practices in operational excellence, security, and platform engineering.

Desired Skills

• Expertise in AWS, particularly with cross-account networking, EKS, Lambda, RDS, S3, Cognito, and IAM.
• Deep experience with Kubernetes, including cluster management, networking, scaling, and security best practices.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform and infrastructure automation, enforcing modular, maintainable, and secure infrastructure.
• Strong background in CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and incident response, ensuring fast and reliable software delivery.
• Experience in build vs. buy decision-making, leveraging third-party automation, open-source tooling, and managed services to optimize cost and efficiency.
• Familiarity with developer productivity and observability tooling, such as Datadog, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, or similar.
• Experience designing self-service platforms that reduce cognitive load and streamline engineering workflows.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills, with the ability to align platform work with business needs.
• Experience leading technical projects and mentoring engineers, helping bridge platform engineering with product development.

Bonus Points

• Experience with fintech, adtech, or other transaction-based systems.
• Background in cost efficiency, compliance, and security automation.
• Contributions to open-source projects or active participation in the engineering community.
• Experience in high-growth startups, balancing speed and scale.

Salary Ranges

US: $160,000 - $195,000 USD
Canada: $115,000 - $160,000 USD
Argentina/Brazil: $105,000 - $130,000 USD

Why Join:

Kard recognizes the unique value each of us brings to our collective success. As part of our remote-first team, you'll have the autonomy to influence our trajectory, actively contributing to the growth of our business and the evolution of our company culture. By embodying our core values of Initiative, Openness, and Humility, you will not only witness but directly foster an inclusive and dynamic work environment, from the executive level down.

Our competitive benefit plan includes:

• Flexible PTO, with a minimum requirement to take one day off a quarter, ten days a year, promoting mental well-being
• Observance of 11 Federal Holidays, plus an additional day each for Black Friday and Christmas Eve (US employees only)
• Health, Dental and Vision Insurance
• 401k with employer match (US employees only)
• Coworking space and WFH setup reimbursement
• Company Offsites two times per year for planning, team-building, and networking

Kard is an equal opportunity employer and we actively encourage applicants of all genders, backgrounds, and experiences to apply. We believe that diverse perspectives enrich our workplace and drive our success.