Lead Platform Engineer

About the company

Our client is an early-stage technology company.

The role

Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Act as the most senior engineer on a core data platform, guiding architecture, security and reliability decisions. The work combines hands-on backend development with mentoring and helping shape a growing engineering team.

What you'll do

• Lead the technical direction, delivery and scaling of a central data platform.
• Build and run the services that bring in varied inputs, expose them through APIs and store them reliably.
• Operate the graph database and search components that power advanced retrieval use cases.
• Develop high-throughput backend services in Go and Python.
• Plan platform security from the ground up, covering access between services, customer separation, credential handling and data protection.
• Manage cloud infrastructure, automated delivery pipelines and monitoring, and set reliability targets and shared developer tooling.
• Raise engineering standards through design guidance, code review and coaching.
• Partner with company leadership to interview candidates and hire engineers as the team expands.

Requirements

What we're looking for

• 5+ years of hands-on experience with production backend systems, data platforms or large-scale distributed services (3+ for exceptional candidates).
• A record of leading design, security and scaling decisions for a core platform.
• Experience bringing structure and discipline to young engineering environments.
• Strong working knowledge of container orchestration, infrastructure as code and modern CI/CD tooling.
• Experience building data pipelines that handle messy, varied source data.
• Experience at well-regarded engineering organizations or startups.
• Ability to work on-site in San Francisco, CA, five days a week.
• Legal authorization to work in the United States.

Bonus points

• Exposure to scientific or life sciences data.
• Familiarity with formal security or compliance certification efforts.

Benefits

Compensation and benefits

• Base salary: USD 220,000 to 300,000 per year
• Equity
• Health, dental and vision coverage
• Life and disability insurance
• Retirement plan
• Paid parental leave
• Flexible time off and paid holidays
• Paid sick leave
• Learning budget
• Relocation support

Location and work model

• San Francisco, CA, United States
• On-site, 5 days per week in office
• Full-time