Staff Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

Amplitude; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 185,000 - 319,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to enhance their Kubernetes-based platform. This role is pivotal in driving developer productivity through automation and system optimization. You will lead the design and implementation of scalable solutions, ensuring seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines and fostering collaboration across teams. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in cloud infrastructure, a passion for mentoring, and a commitment to improving developer experience. Join a dynamic team dedicated to innovation and excellence in a supportive environment that values growth and collaboration.

Benefits

100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance

Flexible time off

Generous stipends for wellness and development

Paid Parental Leave

Mental health and wellness benefits

Employee Stock Purchase Program

Charitable giving grant

Paid volunteer time off

Qualifications

• 8+ years in cloud-native software development and platform engineering.
• Strong expertise in Kubernetes and simplifying cloud infrastructure.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and management of Kubernetes-based platform.
• Collaborate with teams to gather requirements and deliver solutions.
• Mentor engineers and promote a culture of collaboration.

Skills

Kubernetes

Cloud Infrastructure

Golang

Python

Terraform

Observability Tools

Site Reliability Engineering

Infrastructure as Code

Developer Experience

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Datadog

Prometheus

Grafana

New Relic

Splunk

Argo CD

Github Actions

Jenkins

Kubernetes Operators

Helm

Job description

Staff Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

About the Role:

We are looking for a highly experienced and collaborative Staff Platform Engineer to join our team. You will be responsible for the design, automation, and optimization of our Kubernetes-based platform, ensuring that it is scalable, easy to use, and reliable. This is a critical role for our company, and we are seeking someone who not only has deep technical expertise in cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes but also values mentoring, collaboration, and open communication. Your work will directly impact our developer productivity by building systems and abstractions that simplify the deployment of new workloads, making it easy for developers to focus on building features, not infrastructure.

In this role, you will help drive a cultural shift in how our Platform team operates, working to create positive relationships across the company, building trust, and making our platform easier to use. We value someone who listens, learns, and communicates effectively while still ensuring high technical standards and reliability.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, implementation, and management of our Kubernetes-based platform, focusing on scalability, developer experience, and system reliability.
• Architect and maintain automation around Kubernetes, ensuring that the platform is easy for developers to use and requires minimal toil to deploy or modify workloads in a self-service model.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (developers, leaders, and other infrastructure teams) to gather requirements, build consensus, and deliver impactful solutions.
• Integrate observability into the platform, using tools like Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic, and Splunk to monitor system health and performance.
• Drive infrastructure-as-code initiatives using tools like Kubernetes Operators, Helm, Kustomize, and Terraform promoting automation, repeatability, and reliability.
• Ensure that the platform integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines (using Argo CD / Workflows / Rollouts, Github Actions, Jenkins, or similar) and continuously improve developer workflows.
• Contribute to the operational excellence of the platform, including on-call responsibilities and incident management, while building self-healing capabilities where possible.
• Act as a mentor to other engineers on the team, promoting growth and knowledge sharing, ensuring that the team thrives even in the absence of specific individuals.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, empathy, and trust within the team and across departments, helping to bridge gaps between engineering and other business functions.
• Take a hands-on approach to problem-solving, sometimes submitting PRs to resolve issues in codebases or providing detailed solutions when teams need assistance.

What We’re Looking For:

• 8+ years of experience in some combination of cloud-native software development, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, and/or cloud infrastructure, with a more recent focus on Kubernetes and the cloud-native ecosystem.
• Strong expertise in Kubernetes and related CNCF projects (e.g., Argo CD/Workflows, Backstage, Envoy, CoreDNS, and more) and in simplifying complex cloud infrastructure for broader teams.
• Operational experience at scale with technologies like Kafka and Airflow.
• Proficient in common infrastructure languages like Golang, Python, and Terraform, with experience developing and operating production systems.
• Extensive experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, networking, and security.
• Proven experience with monitoring and observability tools (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana Cloud, etc.) and a strong understanding of system performance tuning.
• Expertise in building abstractions over Kubernetes to simplify developer interaction with the platform.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across teams, build consensus, and drive initiatives in a high-pressure environment.
• High level of empathy and patience, with a commitment to mentoring and helping others succeed, and the ability to incorporate feedback and turn it into actionable improvements.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and automation (Terraform, Helm, Kustomize, etc.), with a focus on reducing toil and operational overhead.
• A mindset focused on improving the developer experience and business alignment, with the flexibility to make decisions that may go against ideal technical preferences when necessary.

Who We Are

The Company:Amplitude is filled with humble, life-long learners who are eager to help one another and the company succeed. Our values of growth mindset, ownership, and humility are core to the way we work: we’re tenacious in the face of challenges, we take the initiative to solve problems that drive our shared success, and we operate from a place of empathy and openness, seeking to understand many points of view.

The Product:Amplitude is a digital analytics platform—we help companies capture data they can trust, uncover clear insights about customer behavior, and take faster action. This empowers teams to build better product experiences that drive business growth. We’re super proud of what we’ve built and continue to expand: a platform that empowers companies to thrive in the digital era.

We care about the well-being of our team: We offer competitive pay and benefits packages that reflect our commitment to the health and well-being of our Ampliteers.

Some of our benefit programs include:

• Excellent medical, dental and vision insurance coverages, with 100% employer-paid premiums for employee medical, dental, vision on select plans.
• Flexible time off, paid holidays, and more.
• Generous stipends to spend on what matters most to you, whether that’s wellness (monthly), commuter transit/parking (monthly), learning and development (quarterly), home office equipment (annual), and much more.
• Excellent Parental benefits including: 12-20 weeks of Paid Parental Leave, Carrot Fertility Benefits/Adoption/Surrogacy support, Back-up Child Care support.
• Mental health and wellness benefits including no cost employee access to Modern Health coaching & therapy Sessions and high quality physician office experience via One Medical membership (select U.S. locations only).
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP).

Other fun facts about Amplitude:

• We were recognized in the Newsweek Excellence Index 2024.
• Our customers love us! They've said we're the #1 product analytics solution for 15 quarters in a row on G2.
• We're focused on growth. Check us out in Deloitte’s 2023 Technology Fast 500.
• We care A LOT about product innovation. Fast Company called us the #3 most innovative enterprise company in the world.
• We invest in our people. We offer mentorship programs, management training, and wellness initiatives.
• We give back to our communities. We give every Ampliteer a charitable giving grant and paid volunteer time off.
• We were founded in 2012, went public via a direct listing in September 2021, and are now trading under the ticker $AMPL.
• We’re a global and fast-growing team! We have employees around the world and offices in San Francisco (HQ), New York, Vancouver, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo.
• Our mascot is the datamonster, who loves to chow down on numbers, charts, and graphs. Nom nom.

Amplitude provides equal employment opportunities (EEO). All applicants are considered without regards to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, or sexual orientation.

This role is eligible for equity, benefits and other forms of compensation.

Based on legislation in California, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in San Francisco Bay Area of California. Salary range: $185,000 - $319,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission) plus equity.

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