Staff Platform Engineer

Precision Labs; Northern, San Diego (KY, CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to design and implement the internal platforms that power our engineering, autonomy, and enterprise operations environments. In this senior IC role, you will design scalable, secure, and automated platform infrastructure spanning cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments.

You will collaborate with engineering, security, and infrastructure teams to establish platform architecture, develop paved paths for developers, and implement automation that

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years in platform engineering, DevOps, or site reliability with large-scale systems.
• Hands-on design, build and operation of cloud or hybrid platforms (networking, compute, storage).
• Strong IaC and automation experience (Terraform, Ansible, or similar).
• Experience building or improving CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling.
• Linux-based systems and distributed architecture with automation scripting (Python/Go).
• Proven ability to drive complex platform initiatives with cross-team collaboration.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills for technical direction.

Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture & Engineering: build and evolve scalable internal platform infra across public, private, and on-prem environments.
• Automation & Developer Enablement: develop tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and automated deployment workflows.
• Infrastructure & Systems Engineering: operate highly available platforms, embed security controls, and drive observability.
• Collaborate with security and infrastructure teams to improve reliability, security, and developer productivity.

Skills

Platform engineering

DevOps

Terraform

Ansible

CI/CD pipelines

Python

Go

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

Terraform

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BATaircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description

This position may be based in San Diego, CA; Dallas, TX; Washington, D.C.; or other Shield AI locations.

Shield AI is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to help design and implement the internal technology platforms that power our engineering, autonomy, and enterprise operations environments.

In this highly technical individual contributor role, you will serve as a senior technical expert responsible for designing and evolving scalable, secure, and highly automated platform infrastructure spanning cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments. You will work closely with engineering, security, and infrastructure teams to establish platform architecture, develop paved paths for developers, and implement automation that improves reliability, security, and development productivity across engineering teams.

This role is ideal for an experienced platform engineer who thrives at the intersection of systems architecture, automation, and developer enablement, and who enjoys building the foundational systems that allow engineering organizations to move quickly and safely.

What you'll do:

Platform Architecture & Engineering

• Build and evolve scalable internal platform infrastructure supporting engineering workloads across public cloud, private cloud, and on-prem environments.
• Design and implement platform capabilities that enable standardized, secure, and repeatable application deployment of applications and services.
• Develop and maintain infrastructure-as-code frameworks and reusable platform modules to accelerate engineering productivity.
• Establish and evolve “paved path” platform patterns that simplify secure software delivery for engineering teams.

Automation & Developer Enablement

• Build automation and developer tooling that improves software delivery and engineering productivity.
• Contribute to and improve CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, and developer platform tooling.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to reduce operational friction and improve system observability, resilience, and reliability.
• Develop internal tools, platform integrations, and automation frameworks that streamline engineering workflows across the organization.

Infrastructure & Systems Engineering

• Design, implement, and operate highly available infrastructure platforms supporting mission-critical engineering systems.
• Implement scalable platform solutions across cloud and on-prem environments including compute, networking, identity, and storage.
• Partner with security teams to embed strong security controls, auditability, and compliance requirements into platform architectures.
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies that improve system scalability, security, and operational efficiency.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of experience in platform engineering, DevOps, infrastructure engineering, or site reliability engineering roles supporting large-scale systems.
• Deep hands-on experience designing, building and operating cloud or hybrid infrastructure platforms, including networking, identity, compute, and storage systems.
• Strong expertise with Infrastructure as Code and automation frameworks (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, or similar).
• Experience building or improving CI/CD pipelines, developer platform tooling, and automated deployment workflows.
• Strong systems engineering background across Linux-based environments, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation using scripting or programming languages (Python, Go, Bash, PowerShell, etc.).
• Demonstrated ability to understand, build, and own complex platform initiatives and collaborate across engineering and infrastructure teams.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building or operating internal developer platforms (IDP) or engineering productivity platforms that support large-scale development environments.
• Experience with Kubernetes and modern container platforms.
• Experience deploying infrastructure across commercial and government cloud environments, including AWS and Azure.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps practices and integrating security controls into automated infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience implementing observability platforms, including centralized logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing for large-scale systems.
• Experience working within defense, aerospace, or other regulated industries, including familiarity with frameworks such as NIST or FedRAMP.

Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Temporary employee offer package:

Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part‑time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed toequal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.