Staff Platform Development Engineer

Clearwater Analytics, LLC; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 148,000 - 201,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

401(k) plan

PTO

Parental leave

Medical leave

Disability insurance

Job summary

Clearwater Analytics, LLC in Chicago, IL is seeking a senior Platform Engineer to own and evolve our scalable, hybrid-cloud infrastructure that underpins a high‑scale financial SaaS platform.

You will drive IaC, container orchestration, CI/CD, observability, and data connectivity, partnering with security and compliance teams to meet SOC2/ISO27001 standards.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in platform engineering, Linux systems administration, or DevOps/SRE, with 3+ years in financial services/FinTech.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable infrastructure for a multi-tenant SaaS platform across on-prem, hybrid cloud, and data centers.

Skills

Linux administration

DevOps/SRE

Kubernetes

IaC tooling

Terraform

Ansible

Salt

CI/CD

Prometheus

Grafana

ELK/EFK

Java/JVM

Financial data connectivity

MySQL/PostgreSQL

Networking

Python/Bash scripting

AI-assisted workflows

Security/compliance

Education

BS in Computer Science or Engineering

RHCA/RHCE/CKA/CKAD

Tools

Harbor

Terraform

Ansible

Salt

Kubernetes

Helm

RBAC

Job description

The Team / Who We Are

We build and operate the infrastructure backbone that powers one of the financial services industry's most demanding SaaS platforms. Our Platform Engineering team sits at the intersection of DevOps, private and public cloud infrastructure, and financial technology — ensuring that mission‑critical investment accounting, portfolio analytics, and data connectivity services run with carrier‑grade reliability, 24/7, for over a thousand of the largest hedge funds, asset managers, family offices, insurers and corporations. We move fast, take ownership, and operate with a low‑ego, high‑output mentality. Engineers here have real impact — not just tickets to close. We've scaled significantly over the last several years, expanding our global footprint, deepening our cloud‑native infrastructure, and modernizing the financial data pipelines that connect our platform to custodians, prime brokers, data vendors, and counterparties. If you want to work on problems that actually matter in FinTech — at serious scale — you've found the right team.

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable, highly available infrastructure supporting a multi‑tenant financial SaaS platform — including on‑premises systems, hybrid cloud environments (AWS), and co‑location data centers.
• Lead platform automation efforts using infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC) tooling such as Harbor, Terraform, Ansible, or Salt — driving consistency, repeatability, and auditability across all environments.
• Own and evolve our container orchestration strategy — including Kubernetes cluster operations, workload scheduling, resource governance, and service mesh configuration.
• Architect and operate CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation in collaboration with software engineering and release management teams; drive DevOps best practices across the SDLC.
• Build and maintain a comprehensive observability stack — including metrics (Prometheus/Grafana), log aggregation (Elastic Stack / CheckMk), and distributed tracing — with a focus on financial platform SLIs ➜ SLOs ➜ OLAs ➜ SLAs.
• Support and optimize financial data connectivity infrastructure, including market data feed handlers, custodian data ingestion pipelines, FIX/SWIFT/SFTP‑based integrations, and third‑party data vendor connectivity.
• Provide Tier2/3 escalation support for platform‑level incidents; lead root cause analysis and drive permanent resolution of systemic reliability issues.
• Perform capacity planning, performance engineering, and infrastructure cost optimization across compute, storage, and network layers.
• Partner with the Security and Compliance teams to ensure infrastructure adherence to SOC2 TypeII, ISO27001, and applicable financial industry regulatory requirements.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and vendor solutions; make architectural recommendations grounded in operational maturity and business impact.
• Mentor junior and mid‑level engineers; contribute to team documentation, runbooks, and internal knowledge base standards.

Job Qualifications

• Required: 7+ years of experience in platform engineering, Linux systems administration, or DevOps/SRE roles — with at least 3 years in a financial services or FinTech environment.
• Deep, hands‑on expertise with RHEL and Debian‑based Linux distributions (Ubuntu preferred); strong command‑line proficiency and systems‑level diagnostic ability.
• Production‑grade experience with Kubernetes (cluster operations, Helm, RBAC, networking, storage); familiarity with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) is a strong plus.
• Proven infrastructure automation experience using Ansible, Salt, Terraform, or equivalent IaC tooling — not just writing playbooks, but designing automation frameworks.
• Solid experience with CI/CD platforms (GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Spinnaker) and software delivery pipeline design.
• Hands‑on experience with observability stacks: Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic Stack (ELK/EFK), or equivalent enterprise monitoring and log aggregation tooling.
• Strong working knowledge of Java applications and JVM internals — tuning, GC analysis, heap profiling — given the prevalence of Java‑based financial platform services.
• Familiarity with financial data connectivity concepts: FIX protocol, SWIFT messaging, SFTP/FTPS‑based file transfer workflows, market data feed management (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, etc.), and custodian data integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of relational database systems (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and non‑relational/time‑series data stores in the context of financial data platforms.
• Strong networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/PKI, load balancing, VPN/MPLS, firewall policy — especially as applied to host‑based and data center environments.
• Demonstrated comfort and fluency with AI‑assisted workflows — actively leverages AI tools (e.g., Claude or equivalent) to accelerate troubleshooting, automate documentation, generate and review infrastructure‑as‑code, and augment engineering output; treats AI as a force multiplier, not a novelty.
• Solid scripting and automation skills in Python, Bash, or equivalent; experience with API‑driven infrastructure management is expected.
• Experience working within SOC2, PCI‑DSS, or equivalent compliance frameworks; understanding of audit evidence, access control, and change management requirements.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — you can write a clear post‑mortem, explain a network topology to a non‑technical stakeholder, and document a runbook others can actually follow.
• Preferred: Experience with hybrid and public cloud platforms (AWS EC2/EKS/RDS/S3) — including cost governance and FinOps awareness.
• Preferred: Familiarity with server virtualization and private cloud platforms (ProxMox, VMware vSphere, or equivalent).
• Preferred: Exposure to financial regulatory environments: SEC, FINRA, MiFIDII, or similar — and the infrastructure implications they carry.
• Preferred: Experience with secrets management and certificate lifecycle tooling (HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk, Let’s Encrypt / internal PKI).
• Preferred: Background in investment management, portfolio accounting, or wealth management platform infrastructure is a meaningful differentiator.
• Preferred: Linux certifications: RHCA, RHCE, CKA/CKAD, or equivalent are a plus.
• Preferred: Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent practical experience.

Location & Work Model

This role is based in Chicago, IL with a hybrid work model — we expect meaningful in‑office presence and collaboration.

Compensation

$148,200 - $200,852. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on relevant experience, other job‑related qualifications/skills, and geographic location (to account for comparative cost of living). The Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time.

Benefits

• Health, vision, and dental insurance
• 401(k) plan
• PTO (Paid Time Off)
• Parental leave
• Medical leave
• Short‑term and long‑term disability insurance

Equal Opportunity Statement

Clearwater Analytics is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status, age or any other federally protected class.

Inclusive Hiring

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the job description, we encourage you to still apply! You may be just what we’re looking for.