Senior Platform Engineer (DevX)

K2 Space

$165K — $200K *
Aerospace & Defense
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent with 8+ years experience in distributed/platform systems with Kubernetes/EKS ownership
  • Experience performing proof of concepts (PoCs) for AI platforms and models
  • Proficient in a programming language (Go, TypeScript, Python, C#) and disciplined in source control workflows
  • Knowledgeable in Karpenter, Istio, ArgoCD, and KEDA for Amazon EKS
  • Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines using GitHub or GitLab
  • Skilled in observability, SLOs, and monitoring techniques
  • Experience with infrastructure as code and GitOps practices

Responsibilities

  • Build self-service integration capabilities for Amazon EKS functionalities
  • Create a consistent application deployment process for both AI-assisted and specialized development
  • Promote secure and consistent AI adoption across the platform
  • Establish AI guardrails, observability, and governance
  • Develop functionalities for a golden path development model to ease application onboarding
  • Lead the long-term platform roadmap to integrate AI capabilities
  • Engineer resilient traffic paths and implement chaos testing for robustness
  • Drive observability standards to enhance visibility across environments
  • Provide comprehensive documentation to reduce support challenges
  • Optimize performance and cost while addressing anomalies
  • Supervise the code lifecycle and practices for safe deployments and resource management
  • Mentor engineers and facilitate adoption of application abstractions

Benefits

  • Comprehensive benefits package including medical/dental/vision coverage
  • Paid time off and paid parental leave
  • Life insurance and other employee perks
  • Opportunity for equity in the company
  • Supportive environment encouraging diverse career paths
Full Job Description
The Role

Our enterprise software team builds the digital backbone that powers K2 Space's satellite design, manufacturing, and mission operations. We develop tools that connect engineering, production, and mission control into a seamless ecosystem, enabling our hardware to get from concept to orbit faster than ever before.

As we continue to grow, we're looking for a Senior Platform Engineer on our Enterprise Information Systems team, you must possess strong technical skills and a sense of empathy for your fellow engineers. You will work closely with other talented engineers, architects and senior stakeholders to design, implement, and deliver on our roadmap.

Responsibilities
  • Build self-service integration capability for Amazon EKS functionalities through abstractions. Enabling scoped segmentation, governed namespace, automated workload scaling, multi-tenancy, adaptive ingress/egress, and traceable traffic
  • Build a consistent application deployment process to enable both AI-assisted general application development and specialized application development work
  • Promote AI adoption in a secure and consistent model while supporting AI operational needs
  • Establish AI guardrails, observability, and governance
  • Build guardrails and out-of-the-box platform functionalities for a golden path development model, accelerating application go-live with low-friction adoption of platform tooling
  • Lead long-term platform roadmap incorporating AI capabilities and AI operations
  • Engineer resilient traffic paths (timeouts, retries, circuit breaking, failure isolation) and harden them via chaos tests, automated remediation, and MTTR reduction
  • Drive observability standards so end-to-end request paths and applied policies are visible (source, identity, route, outcome, saturation, cost) across environments
  • Provide approachable docs & diagnostics (guides, diagrams, "why can't this connect?" flows) to shorten support loops
  • Optimize performance & cost (latency budgets, cross-AZ transfer, IP consumption, LB efficiency) and act on anomalies
  • Steward code lifecycle and adoption including versioning, safe migrations, deprecations, usage telemetry, and proactive pruning of unused resources
  • Mentor engineers and partner with adjacent teams to embed application abstractions into golden paths, raising organizational fluency and consistency
  • Build automated policies and processes to ensure good code deployment practices, code hygiene, and good code test practices

Qualifications
  • BS/MS in Computer Science (or equivalent) and 8+ years of experience building and operating distributed/platform systems with production Kubernetes/EKS ownership
  • Comfortable performing PoCs to evaluate new technology: AI platforms, AI models, and new products
  • Proficiency in at least one language (Go, TypeScript, Python, C#) and disciplined SCM workflows (branching, reviews, automated gates)
  • Working knowledge of Karpenter, Istio, ArgoCD, and KEDA for Amazon EKS
  • Working knowledge of CI/CD build pipelines with GitHub or GitLab
  • Competence in observability & SLOs (metrics, tracing, structured logs, L4/L7 telemetry, end-to-end request path, visibility into applied policies, SLI/SLO definition & enforcement)
  • Experience with infrastructure as code and delivery: Terraform or CDK, GitOps (GH Actions, GitLab CI), progressive/canary rollouts, policy-as-code integration
  • Experience with AI-assisted development processes and understanding of how to navigate the benefits and challenges of leveraging AI to accelerate deliverables

Nice to Have
  • Hands-on production experience (architecture through operational support) with Karpenter, Istio, ArgoCD, and/or KEDA
  • Experience with chaos engineering, tooling, and automated remediation frameworks
  • Familiarity with cost-optimization tooling for cross-AZ transfer, IP consumption, or load balancer efficiency
  • Experience mentoring engineers or driving platform adoption across multiple teams

Compensation and Benefits
  • Base salary range for this role is $165,000 - $200,000 + equity in the company
  • Salary will be based on several factors including, but not limited to: knowledge and skills, education, and experience level
  • Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical/dental/vision/ coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and many other perks


If you don't meet 100% of the preferred skills and experience, we encourage you to still apply! Building a spacecraft unlike any other requires a team unlike any other and non-traditional career twists and turns are encouraged!

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