Staff Platform Engineer

We’re looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to serve as the embedded technical leader for the Migration track within our new Forward Engineering organization. In this high-leverage role, you won't just write code; you'll design and enforce the technical standards and automation architecture that enables the entire team to scale. Your work will directly translate one-off customer projects into repeatable, reliable, revenue-driving products.

You will be responsible for creating the automation platform used by the other engineers (Infra, DB, K8s) to achieve minimal variation in migration cycle time. This is a hands-on technical leadership position ideal for an expert who excels at standardizing practices and mentoring peers.

• Design and Architect Automation: Lead the technical design and implementation of the core automation platform, including reusable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) modules (Terraform) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Drive Repeatability (Playbooks): Own the engineering roadmap for tooling that ensures migration steps are documented, testable, and automated, directly supporting the KRs for reduced cycle time and repeatable processes.
• Establish Standards: Define and enforce operational excellence, coding standards, observability requirements, and security practices across all migration tooling built by the Forward Engineering team.
• Technical Mentorship: Serve as the hands-on technical lead, mentoring the mid-level Infrastructure and Database engineers on best practices for building scalable, resilient systems.
• Observability Platform: Implement and maintain a standardized observability stack (e.g., Prometheus/Grafana) to provide visibility into migration velocity, status, and system health for both customers and internal stakeholders.
• Cross-Functional Tooling: Collaborate with the Software Engineer (Integrations) to ensure internal tooling interfaces seamlessly with DigitalOcean platform services.

• 8+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or DevOps roles, with a proven track record operating at the Staff or Principal IC level.
• Deep expertise in Infrastructure as Code (IaC), particularly large-scale usage of Terraform or CloudFormation.
• Expert-level knowledge of CI/CD practices and tooling (e.g., GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) and experience building self-service pipelines for other engineers.
• Fluency in system programming languages (Go or Python) used for building internal tooling and automation APIs.
• Proven ability to drive technical alignment and mentorship across multiple ICs.
• Strong experience designing and maintaining production monitoring and logging systems (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to document complex technical decisions (ADRs) clearly and concisely.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

• We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions. 
• We prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.
• We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
• We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is between $185,000 - $234,000 based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program. 
• DigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

*This is a remote role

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