Principal Engineer, Platform & Infrastructure

Silo

4d•$160,000 - $210,000•Remote

About The Position

This is a Lead Engineer role — a step below CTO, but carrying real weight. You will be the most senior full-time technical individual contributor and de facto owner of Silo’s production platform. You’ll work directly with our Product Head, under the guidance of our fractional CTO during transition, and be responsible for the stability, performance, and architecture of our core systems. You’re not here to manage a team of ten. You’re here to get things working, set standards, mentor others, and own the technical outcome.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2–3 years in a senior, lead, or staff engineering capacity
Track record of improving reliability in complex engineering environments, including defining SLAs with external teams, building escalation paths, and driving down incident frequency through systemic process improvement rather than heroics
Deep expertise in one or more systems-level backend languages (Go, Rust, C++, Java, or similar) with strong working knowledge of at least one, and genuine willingness to work in Go as our primary backend language
Expert-level knowledge of Postgres, query optimization, indexing strategy, schema design, and performance tuning under load
Proven experience partnering with and managing offshore or external engineering teams — including setting expectations, defining deliverables, running structured communication cadences, and holding vendors accountable to quality and uptime standards without micromanaging execution
Strong communication skills — you need to translate complex technical issues for executive stakeholders and customers in a high-stakes environment
Comfortable operating in a startup environment where priorities shift and production issues demand immediate attention — you bring calm and structure to high-pressure situations

Nice To Haves

Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and cloud-native infrastructure
Background in ERP, agtech, supply chain, or fintech domains
Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows and modern developer tooling (we believe in embracing tools like Claude to accelerate engineering velocity)
Experience defining technical processes: incident management, deployment pipelines, on-call rotations
Prior work at a PE-backed or high-growth company navigating scaling challenges

Responsibilities

Take primary ownership of production system reliability — including on-call response, root cause analysis, and remediation
Lead coordination with our external engineering partner on technical escalations, incident resolution, and performance improvements
Drive improvements to our incident management processes, from detection to resolution to post-mortems
Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks — especially in SQL query design, Postgres database architecture, and Go service performance
Define and implement technical standards for scalability, observability, and resilience across the platform
Lead the technical integration of PetTiger’s labor management functionality into the Silo ERP
Work closely with our fractional CTO and CEO to define the long-term architecture vision and engineering operational model
Collaborate with Product to translate roadmap priorities into solid technical execution
Mentor and level-up the broader engineering team; establish a culture of ownership and craftsmanship, while using the most recent advancements in AI.
Be the internal technical voice in decisions about tooling, vendor relationships, and build vs. buy
Help define and grow the in-house engineering organization over time
Eventually become the engineering leader Silo needs for its next phase of growth