Staff Developer Experience Engineer

Trase Systems•Seattle, WA

10d•$170,000 - $230,000

About The Position

As a Staff Developer Experience Engineer (DevEx), you will own the systems, tooling, and workflows that enable engineers to build, test, and ship on Trase OS quickly and safely. As the first DevEx hire, you will build the base of the platform and team. This is a core platform engineering role, not internal tooling support. You will design and operate the development environment, build systems, and integration infrastructure that allow teams to work effectively in a distributed, multi-service system with strict reliability and security constraints. Your work directly determines engineering velocity, system safety, and the ability to scale the team without increasing risk. Trase OS is a complex, evolving platform with long-lived workflows, multiple services, and deployments across environments with varying security requirements. As system complexity grows, developer friction and release risk become the primary bottlenecks. Without strong DevEx ownership: Cross-service changes become slow and error-prone Integration issues surface late (or in production) Local development diverges from production reality Each team reinvents workflows instead of building on shared foundations This role exists to: Create paved roads for development and testing Ensure engineers can make changes confidently across services and environments Turn platform complexity into repeatable, reliable developer workflows You will work on: A shared platform powering all Trase deployments Multi-service systems with complex integration points Development and testing workflows that must reflect real production behavior Tooling that enables safe iteration in security- and compliance-sensitive environments

Requirements

8+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant focus on developer tooling, build systems, or platform engineering
Experience working in multi-service or distributed systems environments
Strong experience with: CI/CD systems and build tooling Test infrastructure (integration / E2E) Developer tooling (CLIs, SDKs, scaffolding)
Strong software engineering fundamentals (ability to build and maintain internal platforms/tools)
Proven ability to improve developer velocity and system reliability simultaneously
Experience driving cross-team technical initiatives
Experience integrating LLMs into developer tooling, build systems, or internal platforms to improve engineering productivity

Nice To Haves

Experience designing local-first or production-like dev environments (e.g., containerized or ephemeral environments)
Experience reducing test flakiness at scale
Familiarity with observability tooling for debugging developer workflows
Experience working in regulated or security-sensitive environments

Responsibilities

Design and maintain local development environments that mirror production behavior as closely as possible
Build and operate build systems, CI pipelines, and test orchestration for multi-service systems
Own integration and end-to-end testing infrastructure, including: Test environments and fixtures Cross-service test coordination Flake detection and reduction
Develop internal tooling (CLI, SDKs, scaffolding) that standardizes how engineers interact with the platform
Create repeatable workflows for building, testing, and deploying changes across services
Improve developer feedback loops (build times, test reliability, debugging workflows)
Partner with DevOps/SRE to ensure development workflows align with production reliability and deployment systems
Establish and maintain runbooks, templates, and onboarding systems that reduce ramp time and inconsistency
Define and drive the developer experience strategy across Trase OS
Establish standards for: Build and test systems Local development environments Cross-service integration workflows
Identify and eliminate systemic sources of developer friction
Partner with platform and product engineers to ensure new systems are designed with operability and testability in mind
Mentor engineers and raise the bar for engineering productivity and development ergonomics

Benefits

Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement with strong performance as the firm grows
100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.
Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay.
Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available.
Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind

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