The RoleWe're hiring a Platform Engineer to own and evolve the critical infrastructure that powers Normal's engineering organization. While our infrastructure is distributed across multiple locations, this position involves managing the local physical infrastructure (network, servers) and requires regular on-site presence in Mountain View and occasional travels to the New York office.
This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role for someone with deep systems knowledge and broad infrastructure experience. You'll work across Linux systems, networking, storage, security, automation, deployment infrastructure, and open-source tooling, taking ownership of complex systems and solving problems that don't always fit neatly into one technical domain.
We're looking for someone who understands infrastructure from the ground up, has strong technical judgment, and is comfortable operating independently in a fast-moving startup environment. Leadership is not required, impact through technical depth, ownership, and execution is.
What You Will Own- Own, operate, and improve critical infrastructure and internal systems across Normal.
- Build and maintain physical network and server infrastructure.
- Design and implement reliable, maintainable, and secure infrastructure across a broad technical surface area.
- Diagnose complex systems issues spanning Linux, networking, storage, security, applications, and deployment infrastructure.
- Automate operational workflows while maintaining a deep understanding of the underlying systems.
- Make thoughtful, high-impact changes to sensitive production and company infrastructure.
- Improve the reliability, observability, maintainability, and security of our systems.
- Evaluate, deploy, and contribute to open-source infrastructure technologies.
- Build documentation and operational practices that allow infrastructure knowledge to scale across a distributed team.
- Partner with engineers across the company to solve infrastructure challenges and support Normal's continued growth.
What Makes You a Great Fit- 8-10+ years of experience in system administration, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, DevOps, or equivalent hands-on systems work.
- Deep knowledge of Linux and/or BSD, and systems administration fundamentals.
- Strong experience across multiple infrastructure domains, including networking, storage, operating systems, security, deployment systems, virtualization/containers, configuration management, and observability.
- Significant experience working with open-source infrastructure technologies and ecosystems.
- Strong programming or scripting skills for infrastructure automation.
- Excellent troubleshooting instincts and the ability to investigate complex or unfamiliar systems problems from first principles.
- Demonstrated ability to independently own critical infrastructure and make safe, high-impact technical decisions.
- Experience operating in environments where systems aren't already perfectly built, documented, or organized.
- Strong written communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively across a distributed team.
- A desire to remain a deeply technical, hands-on individual contributor.
Bonus Points- Meaningful contributions to open-source infrastructure projects.
- An active GitHub or similar profile demonstrating original technical work.
- Participation in technical mailing lists, forums, or open-source communities.
- Technical writing, documentation, or a personal blog demonstrating strong systems knowledge and clear communication.
- Experience building and operating infrastructure in an early-stage or high-growth startup environment.
- Experience owning infrastructure across a particularly broad technical surface area rather than specializing in a single system.
