Staff Platform Engineer

Collectors is the leading creator of innovative technology that provides value-added services for collectors worldwide. We grade, authenticate, vault, and sell millions of record-setting collectibles, all while modernizing and digitalizing the process to further our mission of helping collectors pursue their passions. We’re always on the lookout for talented people to join our growing team.

Our services span collectible trading cards, autographs, comic books, coins, video games, event tickets, and memorabilia. Our subsidiaries include PSA, PCGS, Beckett, SGC, and Card Ladder.

Since our founding in 1986, we have graded and authenticated millions of items. We employ more than 3000 people across our headquarters in Santa Ana, California and offices in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Germany, the UK, and France.

As part of our interview process, we request that candidates have their cameras on during video interviews. This helps foster meaningful conversation and allows us to create an experience that closely resembles our standard working environment. Certain interview steps may take place by phone. For remote roles, and at our discretion, candidates may be asked to participate in an on-site interview as part of the final stages of the process.

We understand there may be occasional circumstances requiring accommodation and are happy to discuss them as needed. Your recruiter will be able to clarify expectations and answer any questions you have.

We’re transforming the collecting experience with technology that brings authentication, grading, and trading into the modern era. Our products are equalizing the playing field by providing tools that make complex research analytics — including pricing, scarcity reports, and historic sales data — accessible to every collector, old or new. Our engineering mission is to democratize technology while promoting innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning throughout the organization. We're seeking engineers to utilize advanced technology in agile settings, with a focus on improving the customer experience for every collector.

We’re looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to join our Platform Engineering team and help make every engineer at Collectors more productive. This is a builder's role for an expert software generalist with systems depth: you'll design and ship the internal platforms, paved paths, and custom tooling that product teams rely on to develop, deploy, and operate software quickly and safely. The problems you'll take on are often ambiguous and cross-cutting; we'll count on you to scope them, propose a direction, and drive them to completion. This role demands someone with both technical breadth and depth across various domains in the Platform Engineering space. The ideal candidate for this role not only knows how to ship code but writes code themselves and knows how a delightful end-to-end AI-enabled SDLC should operate.

Remote or hybrid candidates will also be considered. We believe that there is significant value in in-person collaboration. If you live within a 1 hour commuting distance to one of our offices, you will be required to be onsite most of the time. This will be discussed further as part of the recruiting process.

What You’ll Do:

• Build the paved path. Design, build, and operate the internal platforms that engineers use every day - CI/CD pipelines, developer environments, deployment workflows, and shared services - and continuously reduce the friction between "code written" and "value shipped."
• Create custom tooling that multiplies the team. Identify repetitive, error-prone, or slow engineering workflows and replace them with automation and self-service tools that generalize beyond a single use case.
• Bring AI into the engineering workflow. Prototype and productionize AI-assisted capabilities - from LLM-powered code modification and migration automation to agentic workflows for operational tasks - treating them as real software systems with evaluation, observability, and guardrails, not just prompts.
• Own problems end-to-end in ambiguous spaces. Take loosely defined, high-priority platform challenges from discovery through design, implementation, rollout, and adoption, making pragmatic build-vs-buy and speed-vs-durability tradeoffs along the way.
• Strengthen core infrastructure. Contribute to our cloud and container foundations (Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, networking, observability), improving the reliability, scalability, and cost-efficiency of the systems other teams build on.
• Drive adoption with data. Instrument the platforms you build, define success metrics, and use telemetry and direct partnership with product teams to guide what gets built next.
• Communicate and collaborate. Write clear design documents and tradeoff analyses, embed with partner teams to understand their pain points, and influence engineering practices across the organization without relying on formal authority.

Who You Are:

Must Have

• An experienced engineer with 10+ years building, shipping, and operating production software, ideally with meaningful time spent in platform, infrastructure, developer experience, or similarly leverage-oriented roles.
• An expert software generalist with systems knowledge. You're comfortable moving across backend services, automation pipelines, infrastructure, and internal tools, and you know when to go deep.
• Experience holistically owning complex and broad Developer Platforms. You know what teams need and anticipate that in every new feature you develop and ship.
• Fluent in at least one modern language commonly used for platform work (such as Python or TypeScript) and experienced with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), containers and Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, and modern CI/CD systems.
• A hands-on builder with AI. You've integrated LLMs or agent-based automation into real engineering workflows - shipping working tools, not just experiments - and you stay current on where the technology is heading.
• Energized by ambiguity. You can take a fuzzy problem statement, break it down, propose a plan, and execute - course-correcting quickly as you learn.
• Product-minded about internal customers. You treat fellow engineers as users, care about the usability of what you ship, and measure success by adoption and outcomes rather than output.
• An excellent communicator. Your design docs, runbooks, and postmortems are clear, and you build trust with partner teams through consistent, low-drama delivery.
• Pragmatic about operations. You take ownership from design through deployment and on-call, and you leave systems better documented and more reliable than you found them.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with developer portals, service catalogs, or fleet/dependency management systems.
• Experience running large-scale code migration or modernization efforts.
• Familiarity with evaluation and observability practices for AI-powered systems
• Bachelor’s Degree or relevant hands-on industry experience

Salary Range: The salary range for this position is 165,000-260,000. Actual compensation on this range varies based on a variety of non-discriminatory factors, including location, job level, experience, and skill set. This role may be eligible for bonuses, commissions, or other forms of compensation, please ask your recruiter for details.

Reasons To Join Us:

• Health Insurance: All full-time employees are eligible to enroll in Medical, Dental, and Vision.
• Additional Benefits: Full-time employees are eligible for fertility, commuter, and educational assistance benefits.
• 401(K) Matching Plan: We are proud to offer a competitive 401k matching plan to our employees to support their future financial goals.
• Vacation: All salaried employees are eligible for flexible time-off.
• Holiday Pay: All regular, full-time employees are eligible for ten company paid holidays
• Employee Discounts: Employees receive discounts on select grading services for approved submissions.
• Flexible Hours: Many of our teams offer flexible schedules with varying shifts and will work with you to accommodate your needs.
• Fun Working Environment: Our team members are invited to participate in celebrations, holiday events, and team building activities.

• Additional Resources: Collectors Tech Blog, PSA.
  
  

Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

Collectors uses e-Verify to validate your ability to work legally in the United States.

We are aware that there are instances where individuals are receiving job offers that fraudulently allege to be from Collectors or one of our business units. This type of fraud can be carried out through false websites, through fake e-mails claiming to be from the company or through social media. We never ask for personal information such as your bank account, Social Security numbers or National IDs, nor do we send or request payments for the purchase of business-related equipment. If you suspect fraud, please reach out to [email protected].

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, national origin, gender, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or parental status, disability, veteran status, or other class protected by applicable law. We believe that a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills will better service the diverse community of collectors we support.

If you require an accommodation to apply or interview with us due to a disability or special need, please email [email protected].

U.S. residents: for disclosures relating to personal information we collect during the employment application and recruitment process, please see ourPrivacy Notice for U.S. Applicants.

For New York Residents: In connection with hiring, Collectors Universe, Inc. uses an automated employment decision tool (Brighthire) to assist in evaluating candidates. Collectors Universe, Inc. began using this tool in October 2026.  In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, a summary of the most recent independent bias audit of this tool is available from Brighthire . To request information about the type of data collected, its source, and our data retention policy, contact [email protected].