Senior Platform Engineer

Senior Platform Engineer

Location: Denver, CO (Hybrid)

About the Role

As the Senior Platform Engineer, you are responsible for leading the production reliability of our cloud-hosted applications. You will act as the technical owner for specific cloud systems, transitioning them from reactive support to a proactive model that prioritizes automation, system optimization, and stability.  This position is a powerhouse focused on supporting application delivery and ensuring the cloud infrastructure is a "paved road" for our development teams.  We recognize that talent comes in many forms. If you’re excited about this mission but your path hasn’t perfectly mirrored our requirements list, apply anyway. We value skills, grit, and potential.

Work Model: We prioritize candidates in the Denver, CO area but are open to remote talent.

• Locals: In person for sprint planning and quarterly planning meetings.
• Remote: Quarterly travel for team meetings.
  
  

What You’ll Do

• Solution Ownership: Collaborate with operations team members and Principal and Staff Engineers to understand desired system level outcomes and operational requirements. Investigate, design, test, deploy and support core cloud platform components, including networking, applications, security and resilience features, logging, monitoring, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) features, to ensure success.
• Network Infrastructure Design: Manage scalable cloud network topologies, including transit gateways, VPCs, subnets, security groups, and route tables, ensuring low-latency and secure communication between distributed services
• Implement  CI/CD & Automation: Design and maintain automated delivery pipelines (Infrastructure as Code) to ensure repeatable, secure feature deployments.
• Technical Design: Provide technical input and guidance regarding responsible components during planning and design sessions with Principal and Staff Engineers to ensure the success of the larger integrated system (e.g., service and resource deployment patterns, security controls, cost optimization).
• Individual Contributor: Provide hands-on technical contributions to the infrastructure design and deployment with a time allocation of approximately 80% on solving technical problems (coding IaC, system design, reviews, troubleshooting) and 20% mentoring, coordinating with Staff and Principal Engineers, and supporting operations.
• Tier 3 Support & RCA: Act as the second escalation point for complex incidents, leading thorough root cause analysis (RCA) and implementing systemic, long-term fixes.
  
  

What You Bring

Required Qualifications:

• Experience: 5+ years in cloud operations, or DevOps, with a heavy focus on managing production workloads in mission-critical environments.
• Technical Mastery: Advanced proficiency in AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM), CloudFormation or Terraform, and CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions.
• Cloud Networking: Deep understanding of VPC design, subnetting, Route53, PrivateLink and related AWS technologies; experience troubleshooting complex connectivity issues across multi-account or hybrid on-prem/cloud environments.
• Ownership: Demonstrated ability to take ownership of a problem and deliver a production-ready solution.
• Software Development:  Proficient in one or more software languages such as Node.js or Python.
• Observability: Strong experience with observability stacks (e.g., Splunk, DataDog, or CloudWatch) including logging, tracing, and metrics tuning.
• Travel: You will be required to travel quarterly to Product Increment planning.
• Must be a U.S. Citizen and able to obtain a DoD NIPR network account and Common Access Card (CAC)
• Must have, or be able to obtain, a Secret Clearance.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Based in the Denver, CO area.
• Experience working within DoD, Air Force, or Federal contractor environments.
• Solutions Architect, CloudOps, DevOps or similar AWS certification.

Our Culture

At Simplesense, we value high-trust autonomy. We look for people who can navigate ambiguity and are driven by the mission.

• Safety & Innovation: You embed security and reliability practices into daily work to drive continuous improvement and mitigate risk.
• People & Communication: You invite vigorous debate and offer "kindly blunt" feedback, always maintaining empathy and assuming noble intent.
• Integrity & Ethics: You build trust by honoring commitments, acting ethically, and resolving conflict through direct, honest communication.
• Strategic Problem Solving: You focus on high-priority issues to create documented, and scalable solutions—avoiding shortcuts.
• Agility: You move quickly to fix small problems, learn from the past, and pivot transparently when the mission requires it.

Compensation and Benefits

Pay Range: $155k-195k per year. Compensation is determined based on experience, skill level, and location. We review ranges regularly to ensure market competitiveness.