Lead Platform Engineer

DTN • Dallas, TX

1d • $132,000 - $175,000 • Remote

About The Position

DTN is seeking an experienced, technically accomplished Lead Platform Engineer to design, build, operate, and evolve foundational capabilities of its Operational Decisioning Platform (ODP). The ODP packages cloud infrastructure into higher-level capabilities so engineers, solutions teams, and customers can build data products, applications, and AI-powered tools without managing the underlying infrastructure themselves.

This is a deeply technical leadership role focused on complex distributed-systems challenges, including secure cross-account communication, multi-tenant isolation, and developer-productivity abstractions. The Lead Platform Engineer owns complex systems end-to-end, helps set technical direction and engineering standards, mentors engineers, and partners with Enterprise Architecture and cross-functional teams. The role includes substantial greenfield platform development as well as evolving existing capabilities, with an opportunity to shape platform architecture and standards and a stated path toward Staff- or Principal-level technical leadership as the platform grows.

The position covers developer-facing APIs, SDKs, command-line interfaces, module frameworks, and managed cloud services. It also encompasses secure AWS infrastructure, provisioning and lifecycle automation, event-driven processing, identity and access management, reliability and observability, and AI-augmented platform capabilities. The role participates in on-call rotations and is responsible for the production health of assigned components.

DTN describes itself as a global data and technology company serving operational leaders in energy, agriculture, and weather-driven industries. It has more than 1,200 employees globally.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production distributed systems.
• Track record of independently owning complex software components and systems throughout their lifecycle.
• Ability to lead technical initiatives, establish engineering direction, and make sound architectural decisions.
• Experience mentoring engineers through technical design guidance, code reviews, and collaborative development.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
• Deep expertise in AWS cloud-native architecture, including IAM, serverless compute, API layers, managed data stores, event-driven services, and cloud security primitives.
• Strong understanding of distributed-systems fundamentals, including idempotency, at-least-once delivery, eventual consistency, retries, backoff strategies, and failure-mode analysis.
• Experience designing, developing, and operating secure, reliable, and scalable distributed applications.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform infrastructure as code.
• Strong software build, testing, and deployment discipline, including continuous integration and automated testing.
• Applied security engineering experience involving authenticated service-to-service communication, including technologies such as mTLS.
• Experience with cryptographic signing and verification, identity management, replay protection, and least-privilege access design.
• Ability to reason through complex security requirements, distributed-system failure scenarios, and multi-tenant isolation risks.
• Proficiency in TypeScript/Node.js or demonstrated ability to become productive with these technologies quickly.
• Academic or professional software-development exposure to front-end technologies such as React, Angular, or Vue.
• Academic or professional software-development exposure to back-end technologies such as Node.js or Python.
• Academic or professional experience with SQL and database technologies such as PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, or equivalent platforms.
• Expert-level experience developing RESTful APIs built with Node.js.
• Expert-level experience consuming REST and GraphQL APIs.
• Journeyman-level knowledge of source control and versioning using Git.
• Hands-on experience using modern AI-assisted development tools, including coding assistants and agentic tooling, to improve productivity.
• Hands-on experience designing and building AI-augmented platform capabilities, including LLM and AI-agent integrations and managed AI services.
• Ability to incorporate AI-enabled functionality into modular, reusable platform components.
• Strong technical problem-solving skills and ability to evaluate complex architectural alternatives.
• Ability to independently guide complex engineering work from design through production operation.
• Ability to communicate technical direction, provide constructive engineering feedback, and mentor engineers.
• Commitment to building secure, reliable, observable, and reusable engineering solutions.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building multi-tenant SaaS platforms, cross-account control planes, or internal developer platforms and SDKs.
• Experience designing APIs and SDKs for other engineers, with attention to developer ergonomics, consistency, and usability.
• Familiarity with observability technologies such as OpenTelemetry.
• Experience with schema-driven interface validation.
• Awareness of multi-cloud architectures and technologies.
• Experience developing platform components using TypeScript/Node.js, Python, containers, Terraform, and modern AWS cloud-native services.
• Experience building secure cross-account infrastructure and developer-facing abstractions in greenfield platform environments.
• Familiarity with module frameworks that manage authenticated dispatch, signing, validation, metrics, and reconciliation.
• Experience applying trunk-based development, ADR-driven design, immutable or pinned releases, least-privilege access, and schema-validated interfaces.
• Background in operational or data-intensive industries such as energy, logistics, weather, or agriculture.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical design, implementation, delivery, operation, and ongoing evolution of complex platform capabilities.
• Define engineering problems, assess architectural alternatives and tradeoffs, and propose scalable, secure, maintainable solutions.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture to design and implement foundational platform capabilities.
• Own complex components end-to-end, from developer-facing interfaces through supporting cross-account cloud infrastructure.
• Design, develop, and maintain developer-facing APIs, SDKs, CLIs, module frameworks, and managed platform services.
• Build reusable abstractions that let engineering teams create data products, applications, and AI-powered solutions without directly managing cloud infrastructure.
• Lead development of greenfield capabilities and maintain and evolve existing systems.
• Establish architectural patterns and technical approaches for scalability, reliability, security, and developer productivity.
• Design and build secure distributed systems across isolated AWS accounts and multi-tenant environments.
• Develop secure cross-account communication mechanisms and infrastructure for multi-tenant isolation.
• Design and implement provisioning and lifecycle automation for cloud-based capabilities.
• Build asynchronous and event-driven processing, including reliable message handling, retries, backoff strategies, and idempotent operations.
• Develop service discovery, reconciliation, and health-monitoring capabilities.
• Apply distributed-systems principles, analyze failure scenarios, and design safeguards for communication failures, service interruptions, and isolation-boundary risks.
• Develop cloud-native solutions using AWS identity and access management, serverless compute, API services, managed data stores, event-driven services, and cloud security primitives.
• Build and maintain infrastructure using Terraform and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Own security-critical platform components and communication paths; design and harden authenticated service-to-service communication, including technologies such as mTLS.
• Implement cryptographic signing, signature verification, and replay protection; maintain secure identity and access management patterns and apply least-privilege and multi-tenant isolation practices.
• Integrate security requirements into platform architecture, interfaces, infrastructure, and operational practices.
• Lead development and evolution of SDKs, APIs, CLIs, and the shared module framework; define interface contracts, data contracts, and integration patterns.
• Develop framework functionality for authentication, authenticated dispatch, validation, metrics, retries, and reconciliation; support schema-driven definitions and validation.
• Establish technical direction, architectural standards, engineering best practices, interface and data-contract standards, testing expectations, infrastructure-as-code practices, and observability requirements.
• Author and review technical designs and architecture decision records; provide leadership through architecture discussions, design reviews, code reviews, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Mentor mid-level and earlier-career engineers through technical feedback, pairing, and hands-on guidance; improve engineering practices and team effectiveness.
• Own operational reliability and production health of assigned platform components; instrument services with metrics, logging, tracing, and observability capabilities.
• Define and support SLOs and reliability expectations; participate in on-call rotations, investigate incidents, troubleshoot failures, and implement improvements that reduce recurring incidents and operational toil.
• Maintain build, test, and deployment discipline through continuous integration, automated testing, and reliable releases; apply trunk-based development, infrastructure as code, immutable and pinned releases, least-privilege access, and schema-validated interfaces.
• Continuously improve resilience, debuggability, operational efficiency, and production stability.
• Use AI-assisted software-development tools, including coding assistants and agentic technologies, to improve engineering effectiveness and productivity.
• Design and build AI-augmented capabilities in modular platform components, including integration of LLMs, AI agents, and managed AI services.
• Evaluate and implement AI-related technologies that expand the functionality and value of the ODP.

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO
• Flexible working hours
• Remote work model (position dependent)
• Competitive medical, dental, and vision insurance plans
• 6% 401(k) matching
• Unlimited access to 13,000+ courses via a learning platform to support employee career advancement
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Competitive salary
• The role may also be eligible for market-competitive variable pay and benefits

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior