Sr. Software Engineer (Platform)

Instrumental, Inc.•Palo Alto, CA

4d•$185,000 - $225,000

About The Position

Instrumental technology is used by the world’s most admired electronics brands, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, and Meta, to accelerate new product development and improve production yields. Our technology leverages AI to process data generated on the manufacturing floor, automating failure identification and resolution, improving yield, quality, and time-to-market. In the past few quarters, our technology has become mission-critical for AI server manufacturers. We’re rapidly growing our global presence to enable deeper integrations into our customers’ complex manufacturing environments. Instrumental is hiring a Senior Platform Engineer who will take broad ownership of our platform layer: the services, pipelines, and infrastructure that the rest of engineering depends on. The ideal candidate will be able to operate independently on ambiguous problems, make sound architectural decisions with limited guidance, and raise the bar for the team through both their technical contributions and their influence on engineering practices. We are explicitly looking for someone who has already demonstrated sustained impact in a professional setting, ideally at a startup where they owned systems end-to-end.

Requirements

Has 5+ years of backend or platform engineering experience; startup experience required
Takes full ownership of production systems — from design through deployment and operations
Makes pragmatic, well-reasoned technical decisions and can articulate their tradeoffs
Is fluent in Python or Go; experience with other backend languages is a plus
Has experience with data modeling and data processing pipelines
Leads the way in AI tool adoption on their teams to improve development productivity and outcomes
Communicates clearly and collaborates effectively across teams

Responsibilities

Own the full software development lifecycle across design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operations
Build and evolve core platform services with an emphasis on pragmatism, maintainability, and operational excellence
Improve system simplicity, reliability, security, observability, incident detection, and response
Leverage AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity and iteration speed
Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new tools, technologies, and technical debt based on ROI
Collaborate across engineering teams to ensure platform capabilities meet product, AI, and edge system needs