Staff Software Engineer, Platform & Solutions

twentysix; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

twentysix in El Segundo is seeking an experienced Senior Cloud Platform Engineer to architect and improve our cloud foundations on Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, and serverless workloads. You will design platform capabilities and strive for scalable, secure, and well-governed environments.

You will implement GitOps workflows, build reusable Terraform modules and Helm charts, mentor engineers, and partner with product and data teams to deliver reliable delivery pipelines and observability.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Senior or staff-level engineer across multiple technical domains.
• Extensive hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably GCP, including Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, cloud-native architecture, and production workload operations.
• Strong experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Argo CD, and GitOps principles.
• Strong OO background and programming fundamentals, plus scripting and automation using Python or Bash.
• Experience with observability practices, including metrics, logs, traces, alerting, dashboards, SLOs, and incident response.
• Ability to debug and improve systems across applications, infrastructure, data pipelines, networking, deployments, and cloud services.
• Ability to quickly learn unfamiliar systems and make sound technical decisions with incomplete information.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with engineers, product managers, and technical leadership.
• A pragmatic problem-solving mindset; move quickly between systems, learn on the fly, and create durable solutions without over-engineering.

Responsibilities

• Architect cloud foundations on GCP for scalable workloads.
• Design and build platform capabilities across GCP, Kubernetes, serverless, CI/CD, GitOps, observability, AI, and developer tooling.
• Establish and improve GitOps workflows using tools such as GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Terraform, Helm, and automated release pipelines.
• Manage and evolve enterprise Kubernetes clusters, including workload standards, deployment patterns, security controls, and operational practices.
• Build reusable Terraform modules, Helm charts, templates, SDKs, scripts, and internal tools that reduce repeated manual work.
• Improve developer experience by creating paved roads, self-service workflows, better documentation, standardized environments, and reliable delivery pipelines.
• Implement secure-by-default engineering patterns for IAM, Workload Identity Federation, secrets management, network security, auditability, and least-privilege access.
• Help software teams integrate with observability tooling such as OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Sentry, or similar systems.
• Troubleshoot difficult production issues across applications, infrastructure, data workflows, cloud services, and deployment systems.
• Partner with application, data, product, and UX stakeholders to design practical solutions to complex business and technical problems.
• Support data and AI platform needs where needed, including PostgreSQL, dbt, BigQuery, Snowflake, CDC, Data Lakes, and other data tools.
• Maintain artifacts for orchestration platforms at scale, preferably Airflow.
• Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through code review, architecture review, pairing, documentation, and direct implementation.
• Evaluate vendors, frameworks, and platform tooling with a pragmatic build-versus-buy mindset.
• Help improve cloud cost visibility, resource governance, budget controls, and FinOps practices.

Skills

Cloud architecture

Senior engineer

CI/CD pipelines

Python/Bash scripting

Observability practices

Mentoring engineers

Leadership

Problem solving

Cross-system debugging

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Docker

GitHub Actions

Argo CD

Helm

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Sentry

Job description

You Will Be

• Architecting and improving cloud foundations, especially on Google Cloud Platform, to support scalable, secure, well-governed workloads.

• Designing and building platform capabilities across GCP, Kubernetes, serverless, CI/CD, GitOps, observability, AI, and developer tooling.

• Establishing and improving GitOps workflows using tools such as GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Terraform, Helm, and automated release pipelines.

• Managing and evolving enterprise Kubernetes clusters, including workload standards, deployment patterns, security controls, and operational practices.

• Building reusable Terraform modules, Helm charts, templates, SDKs, scripts, and internal tools that reduce repeated manual work.

• Improving developer experience by creating paved roads, self-service workflows, better documentation, standardized environments, and reliable delivery pipelines.

• Implementing secure-by-default engineering patterns for IAM, Workload Identity Federation, secrets management, network security, auditability, and least-privilege access.

• Helping software teams integrate with observability tooling such as OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Sentry, or similar systems.

• Troubleshooting difficult production issues across applications, infrastructure, data workflows, cloud services, and deployment systems.

• Partnering with application, data, product, and UX stakeholders to design practical solutions to complex business and technical problems.

• Supporting data and AI platform needs where needed, including PostgreSQL, dbt, BigQuery, Snowflake, CDC, Data Lakes, and other data tools.

• Comfortable maintaining both infrastructure and DAGs for an orchestration platform at scale, preferably Airflow.

• Mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar through code review, architecture review, pairing, documentation, and direct implementation.

• Evaluating vendors, frameworks, and platform tooling with a pragmatic build-versus-buy mindset.

• Helping improve cloud cost visibility, resource governance, budget controls, and FinOps practices.

You Must Have

10+ years of professional software engineering experience.

Significant experience operating as a senior or staff-level engineer across multiple technical domains, not just one specialty.

Extensive, hands‑on experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably on Google Cloud Platform, including Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, cloud‑native architecture, and production workload operations.

Strong experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Argo CD, and GitOps principles to enable automated deployment workflows, environment management, and release automation.

Strong OO background and programming fundamentals, as well as scripting and automation skills using Python or Bash.

Experience with observability practices, including metrics, logs, traces, alerting, dashboards, SLOs, and incident response.

Ability to debug and improve systems across application code, infrastructure, data pipelines, networking, deployments, and cloud services.

Ability to quickly learn unfamiliar systems and make sound technical decisions with incomplete information.

Strong communication and leadership skills with engineers, product managers, and technical leadership.

A pragmatic problem‑solving mindset; this role requires someone who can move quickly between systems, learn on the fly, and create durable solutions without over‑engineering.

Nice to Have

• Knowledge of GCP Enterprise Foundations Blueprint or similar enterprise cloud foundation patterns.

• Clear understanding with GKE, Workload Identity Federation, Artifact Registry, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, or related GCP services.

• Examples of building internal developer platforms, self‑service infrastructure, golden paths, or platform APIs.

• Comfort working with data platform tools such as Airflow, dbt, BigQuery, Snowflake, Data Lakes, Kafka, Pub/Sub, and GCS.

• Familiarity with serverless architectures and event‑driven systems.

• Awareness of SOC 2, PCI, CIS benchmarks, or similar security and compliance frameworks.

• Experience modernizing legacy systems, monoliths, deployment processes, or poorly governed cloud environments.