Platform Engineer

Gather AI • Pittsburgh, PA

34d

About The Position

Own Architecture: Align backend, frontend, platform, and infrastructure decisions into a coherent, enterprise-grade architecture
Reflect Excellence: Replace "firefighting" with predictable execution. You will lead the effort to retire scalability and reliability debt, safely upgrade critical infrastructure, and reduce single-threaded dependencies
Set Direction: Set the standard for engineering technical hygiene. You will drive high-level decisions on testing strategies, validation guardrails, and system design concerns that directly impact delivery speed and maintainability
Evolve Systems: Modernize and scale existing production systems by applying database-level strategies (schema evolution, replication tradeoffs) and platform primitives (orchestration, runtime constraints) as architectural tools
Mentor: Elevate the organization by establishing shared practices, aligning terminology, and mentoring senior talent across the engineering team
Exhibit First-Principles Thinking: Establish a deep understanding of data systems, latency-sensitive services, and failure modes

Requirements

• Distributed Systems: Mastery of performance-sensitive REST APIs, caching strategies, and core distributed systems concepts
• Relational Data Systems: Expert-level PostgreSQL (upgrades, query tuning, replication tradeoffs, and schema evolution) and advanced SQL
• Cloud & Containers: Deep experience with Azure and/or AWS and production-grade Kubernetes/Docker
• Backend Development: Strong production experience in Node.js and/or Python
• Reliability & Security: Hands-on experience with Observability (logs, metrics, traces), CI/CD, SRE fundamentals (SLIs/SLOs), and security hygiene (IAM, secrets management)

Nice To Haves

• Domain Expertise: Experience in logistics, warehouse systems, or robotics-adjacent platforms is a plus, but not required. We value your ability to apply sound architectural judgment to new problem spaces
• Future Scale: If you have operated at a slightly smaller scale but can reason clearly about "what breaks next" (e.g., multi-regional architectures or advanced data governance), we will help you bridge that gap
• Organizational Maturity: While we value experience driving org-wide standards, we don't expect perfection on day one. We look for the intent to elevate our shared practices as you build trust
• AI-Ready: At Gather, we are at the leading edge of both applied classical ML and next-gen LLM/VLM AI. Come prepared to work with the latest and greatest tooling

Responsibilities

• Align backend, frontend, platform, and infrastructure decisions into a coherent, enterprise-grade architecture
• Lead the effort to retire scalability and reliability debt, safely upgrade critical infrastructure, and reduce single-threaded dependencies
• Drive high-level decisions on testing strategies, validation guardrails, and system design concerns that directly impact delivery speed and maintainability
• Modernize and scale existing production systems by applying database-level strategies (schema evolution, replication tradeoffs) and platform primitives (orchestration, runtime constraints) as architectural tools
• Elevate the organization by establishing shared practices, aligning terminology, and mentoring senior talent across the engineering team
• Establish a deep understanding of data systems, latency-sensitive services, and failure modes

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed