Senior Platform Engineer (Azure Platform)

Job type: Full Time · Department: Infrastructure · Work type: Remote

United States

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

  • We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.

  • We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.

  • We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Agency, Velocity, Craft, and Truth. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

You are a senior platform engineer who can turn cloud primitives into reliable, supported building blocks for other engineers. You have operated production systems in Azure, write software rather than relying on manual operations, and make deliberate choices about where Phaidra should use a common abstraction versus a provider-native service.

You are pragmatic, product-minded, and comfortable owning ambiguous work across software, infrastructure, reliability, and security boundaries in a remote company.

**We are seeking teammates who are based in the United States or Canada (Eastern timezone).

About the Role

You will lead the design and implementation of the systems required to make Phaidra’s platform capabilities available on Azure. You will turn Phaidra’s broader platform strategy into working Azure foundations, supported deployment workflows, Kubernetes capabilities, observability, and security defaults without creating a separate platform for each cloud.

This role is important to Phaidra’s next phase of growth. As our products reach a broader set of customers and deployment environments, the platform must support Azure with the same reliability and engineering leverage as our existing cloud systems. The architecture and interfaces you establish will shape how multiple product and AI teams build and operate software.

What You’ll Work On

The Platform team works across the areas below. Your work will span this surface based on company priorities, bringing particular depth in Azure.

  1. Azure platform foundations

    • Design and operate production Azure environments, including subscriptions and management groups, networking, private connectivity, identity, policy, DNS, storage, and managed Kubernetes.

    • Build reusable platform components for AKS and supporting Azure services.

    • Establish secure, observable, cost-aware defaults that product teams can consume without cloud-specific expertise.

  2. Developer platform and delivery

    • Extend golden paths, service templates, and self-service workflows to Azure.

    • Extend Phaidra’s existing Terraform, Kapitan, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, and Crossplane workflows to provision and deploy services on Azure.

    • Build libraries, CLIs, APIs, controllers, and automation that remove manual work from environment provisioning and service operations.

  3. Reliability and operations

    • Define SLIs, SLOs, dashboards, alerts, backup, recovery, and capacity practices for Azure-hosted services.

    • Participate in on-call, lead incident follow-up, and turn recurring operational work into platform improvements.

    • Design for failure across availability zones and, where required, regions.

  4. Security and governance

    • Partner with security on identity, secrets, policy, network isolation, supply-chain controls, and compliance evidence.

    • Encode governance in platform modules and pipelines rather than depending on review-time memory.

  5. Technical leadership

    • Lead the design and implementation of multi-team initiatives that advance Phaidra’s broader platform strategy.

    • Make sound technical decisions, surface cross-platform tradeoffs early, document interfaces, and mentor engineers.

Key Qualifications

  • 5+ years of professional experience in platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, or software engineering with an infrastructure focus.

  • Strong production experience with Azure, including AKS, Entra ID, Azure networking and private endpoints, Azure Policy, Key Vault, managed identities, and Azure Monitor or equivalent observability integrations.

  • Production Kubernetes experience, including workload identity, networking, storage, autoscaling, upgrades, and incident debugging.

  • Infrastructure-as-code experience with Terraform and a configuration or packaging system such as Kapitan, Helm, or Kustomize.

  • Experience building or operating internal platform capabilities such as golden paths, service templates, self-service environments, platform APIs, or developer tooling.

  • Strong software engineering skills in Python, Go, or another high-level language; comfortable building maintainable libraries, services, CLIs, or controllers.

  • Experience with GitOps and CI/CD in production.

  • Demonstrated ownership of ambiguous technical initiatives spanning multiple teams.

Preferred Skills & Experience

  • Production experience across Azure and at least one other major cloud, with evidence of designing useful multi-cloud interfaces rather than forcing lowest-common-denominator abstractions.

  • Experience migrating or extending a Kubernetes platform from GCP or AWS into Azure.

  • Crossplane, Azure Service Operator, or Kubernetes operator development.

  • AI/ML infrastructure, GPU scheduling, model serving, vector systems, or distributed data processing.

  • FinOps practices and Azure cost optimization.

Nice-to-haves

  • Kubernetes operator development or deployment.

  • Experience with private customer deployments or restricted network environments.

  • Familiarity with software supply-chain controls and compliance evidence automation.

Our Stack

  • Languages: Python, Go, Bash

  • Cloud: Azure and GCP

  • Containers: Kubernetes, AKS, GKE

  • IaC and configuration: Terraform, Kapitan, Crossplane, Helm/Kustomize

  • Delivery: GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis

  • Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry

Onboarding

In your first 30 days…

  • Learn Phaidra’s products, Platform strategy, current GCP architecture, delivery model, and the requirements driving Azure adoption.

  • Meet engineers across Platform, Productivity, product engineering, AI, and security to understand how they use and depend on the platform.

  • Set up the development environment and complete the team’s platform onboarding exercise.

  • Trace a representative service from source code through CI, GitOps deployment, Kubernetes operation, and observability.

  • Review the existing Azure designs, implementation state, and major architectural decisions that remain open.

  • Ship a scoped improvement to an Azure foundation, platform component, or its automation.

  • Shadow the Platform on-call rotation and review recent incidents and operational follow-up.

In your first 60 days…

  • Develop a detailed understanding of how Phaidra’s platform abstractions map to Azure and where provider-specific behavior must remain explicit.

  • Own a defined Azure platform area and document its supported interface, reliability model, security assumptions, and operational runbooks.

  • Deliver a reusable Azure capability through the standard GitOps and infrastructure-as-code path.

  • Support a product or AI engineering team adopting that capability and incorporate feedback into the platform design.

  • Participate in on-call with support from the team and complete follow-up that reduces repeat operational work.

In your first 90 days…

  • Lead the design and implementation of an Azure platform initiative through production use by a product or AI workload.

  • Establish measurable reliability, security, developer-experience, and cost outcomes for the area you lead.

  • Document architectural decisions and the interfaces that keep Azure consistent with Phaidra’s broader platform while preserving useful provider-native capabilities.

  • Mentor engineers working in adjacent platform areas and contribute to the next phase of the Azure platform roadmap.

  • Operate comfortably in the Platform on-call rotation and turn what you learn into systemic improvements.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

  1. Meeting with People Operations team member (30 minutes)

  2. Meeting with Hiring Manager (30 minutes)

  3. Platform Engineer Technical Interview (60 minutes)

  4. Azure Technical Interview (60 minutes)

  5. Cyber Enablement Interview: Controls Implementation (45 minutes)

  6. Culture fit interview with one of Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes)

We use Kula as our hiring platform. During your interview, Kula's AI Notetaker will record a transcript of the meeting to allow the interviewer to focus on the interview, not the note taking.

Base Salary

US Residents:

  • Tier 1 (Largest highest-cost metros): 136,496 USD - 200,194 USD

  • Tier 2 (Other major metros): 129,671 USD - 190,185 USD

  • Tier 3 (Mid-sized metro areas): 122,846 USD - 180,175 USD

  • Tier 4 (All other locations): 116,022 USD - 170,165 USD

Canada Residents:

  • Tier 1 (Vancouver, Toronto): 140,250 CAD - 205,700 CAD

  • Tier 2 (Montreal): 130,900 CAD - 191,986 CAD

  • Tier 3 (Waterloo, Ottawa, Calgary): 112,200 CAD - 164,560 CAD

  • Tier 4 (Smaller cities / rural areas): 102,850 CAD - 150,846 CAD

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for equity. Final salary will be determined based on several factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, expertise, education and location. In some cases, final compensation may fall outside the posted range. Salary ranges are regularly reviewed and may be adjusted in response to market trends.

Benefits & Perks

  • Fast-paced, team-oriented environment where your work directly shapes the company’s direction.

  • We are a 100% remote company. 

  • Competitive compensation & meaningful equity.

  • Outsized responsibilities & professional development.

  • Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).

  • Unlimited paid time off, with a required minimum of 20 days per year.

  • Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).

  • Flexible stipends to support your workspace, well-being, and continued professional development.

  • Company MacBook.

Please note: Not all of Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On being Remote

We take a thoughtful and intentional approach to remote collaboration. Inspired by pioneers like GitLab, we embrace proven best practices to foster an exceptional remote work environment. Our culture is documentation-first, and we prioritize asynchronous communication to support focus and flexibility across time zones. While we value independence, we stay closely connected through tools like Slack and video conferencing. Weekly all-hands meetings help us align and build strong relationships, and we regularly host virtual team-building activities and social events to maintain a sense of camaraderie.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#LI-Remote

To be considered for any position at Phaidra, you must submit an online application. This role will remain open until it is filled.

Phaidra only hires individuals who are legally authorized to work in the specified location(s) above. We do not provide employment sponsorship. Candidates requiring visa sponsorship, either now or in the future, are not eligible for hire.

Candidates who advance beyond the initial screening stage will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in order to continue through the interview process.

All employment offers are contingent upon successful completion of employment authorization verification and applicable background checks, in accordance with local laws and company policies.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.

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