Staff Platform Engineer, Platform Development

Simplesense•San Antonio, TX

14h•$190,000 - $260,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Simplesense builds, deploys, and sustains the Installation Resilience Platform that enables mission operators to rapidly adapt and respond. The Platform protects critical infrastructure from cyber attack while unlocking previously siloed information to monitor, diagnose, and improve response times to incidents. Our adversaries rapidly adopt the latest technology: we help defense users respond in kind. Simplesense is a non-traditional defense contractor and prime on the Air Force's Installation Resilience Operations Command and Control (IROC) program, which is now expanding to five additional Air Force, Space Force, and Army installations from the one prototype installation, Tyndall Air Force Base. Our team combines over 100 years of direct mission experience solving hard problems with 50 years technical expertise deploying DevSecOps, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure, giving us a deep appreciation for our customers’ mission and end users’ priorities. We build for scale, architecting and prioritizing technical work for long term sustainability. As our Staff Platform Engineer, you will play a critical role in owning the technical strategy, architecture, and delivery of the operational platform to enable rapid decision-making and data visualization for critical infrastructure. You will oversee the end-to-end success of core platform components—from cloud network architecture to performance and reliability—and partner closely with the Product and Operations teams to ensure our platform remains resilient, secure, and ready for the mission.

Requirements

7–15 years of professional experience in building and delivering scalable, secure, and reliable systems and cloud services.
Deep expertise with AWS systems and networking (e.g., EC2, SSM, VPCs, Route53, transit gateways), infrastructure automation (Terraform or CloudFormation), and proficiency in NodeJS or Python.
Demonstrated understanding of replatforming or rehosting services within AWS environments, and proven experience at a Staff/Principal level navigating technical ambiguity to lead large-scale cross-functional efforts.
Ability to travel for a full week quarterly for team planning and client Program Management Reviews (PMRs).
Must be a U.S. Citizen and capable of obtaining a DoD NIPR network account and Common Access Card (CAC).
Must hold or be willing to obtain a security-relevant certification (e.g., CompTIA Security+, Cloud+).
Must have, or be able to obtain, a DoD Secret Clearance.

Nice To Haves

Strongly prefer candidates residing in the Denver, CO, San Antonio, TX, or Brooklyn, NY metro areas (with a special emphasis on Denver, CO).
Prior experience working within DoD, Air Force, Space Force, operational intelligence, industrial technology, or fast-paced Federal contractor/dual-use startup environments.
Relevant technical certifications, such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer.
Experience with Windows domain environments and observability/monitoring tools (e.g., Splunk, Datadog).

Responsibilities

Serve as a technical owner for the success of platform development projects, from initial concept evaluation and design to final delivery and maintenance. Responsibilities will span new feature development and integration, cloud network architecture updates and implementation of performance and reliability improvements.
Work closely with cross-functional Development, Product, and Operations teams, as well as external vendors, to ensure the platform meets stability, security, and scalability requirements on operational timelines.
Work with Engineering and Product leadership to ensure clear, actionable and achievable plans that span the organization.
Lead planning sessions, create design documents, and make high-level technical decisions for core platform components (e.g., infrastructure-as-code, deployment pipelines, operational reliability, security controls, and disaster recovery planning).
Elevate the entire team by establishing best practices, conducting insightful code reviews, and unblocking teammates who are stuck, prioritizing the team's output over individual coding tasks.
Provide hands-on technical contributions for the most critical or demanding parts of the project, setting the technical pattern and standard for others, with a healthy time allocation of approximately 60% on solving technical problems (coding, design, reviews).
Dedicate time (approx. 40%) to planning, cross-team communication, defining scope with Product Owners, breaking down work, and identifying/fixing process issues (e.g., CI/CD pipelines, testing standards for platform components).