Staff Platform Engineer

About the role

Shield AI is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to design and implement internal technology platforms that power engineering, autonomy, and enterprise operations environments. This senior individual‑contributor role is responsible for scalable, secure, and highly automated platform infrastructure across cloud, on‑premise, and hybrid environments. The position may be based in San Diego, CA; Dallas, TX; Washington, D.C.; or other Shield AI locations.

Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture & Engineering: Build and evolve scalable internal platform infrastructure supporting engineering workloads across public cloud, private cloud, and on‑prem environments; design standardized, secure, repeatable application deployment capabilities; develop and maintain infrastructure‑as‑code frameworks and reusable platform modules; establish “paved path” patterns that simplify secure software delivery.
• Automation & Developer Enablement: Build automation and developer tooling to improve software delivery and engineering productivity; contribute to CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, and developer platform tooling; collaborate with engineering teams to reduce operational friction and enhance observability, resilience, and reliability; develop internal tools, platform integrations, and automation frameworks that streamline workflows.
• Infrastructure & Systems Engineering: Design, implement, and operate highly available infrastructure platforms for mission‑critical engineering systems; implement scalable solutions across cloud and on‑prem environments including compute, networking, identity, and storage; partner with security teams to embed strong security controls, auditability, and compliance; evaluate and introduce new technologies to improve scalability, security, and efficiency.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of experience in platform engineering, DevOps, infrastructure engineering, or site reliability engineering supporting large‑scale systems.
• Deep hands‑on experience designing, building, and operating cloud or hybrid infrastructure platforms (networking, identity, compute, storage).
• Strong expertise with Infrastructure as Code and automation frameworks (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, or similar).
• Experience building or improving CI/CD pipelines, developer platform tooling, and automated deployment workflows.
• Strong systems engineering background across Linux‑based environments, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation using scripting or programming languages (Python, Go, Bash, PowerShell, etc.).
• Demonstrated ability to own complex platform initiatives and collaborate across engineering and infrastructure teams.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or operating internal developer platforms (IDP) or engineering productivity platforms for large‑scale development environments.
• Experience with Kubernetes and modern container platforms.
• Experience deploying infrastructure across commercial and government cloud environments, including AWS and Azure.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps practices and integrating security controls into automated infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience implementing observability platforms (centralized logging, monitoring, distributed tracing) for large‑scale systems.
• Background in defense, aerospace, or other regulated industries; familiarity with frameworks such as NIST or FedRAMP.

Compensation

Salary range: $123,000 – $185,000 per year. Compensation is influenced by factors such as skill set, experience, licenses, certifications, and work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check.

Benefits

• Pay within the listed range plus bonus.
• Benefits package (full‑time regular employees).
• Equity participation.
• Temporary employee offer includes pay within the range plus a temporary benefits package after 60 days of employment.
• Military fellows and part‑time employees are not eligible for benefits.