Principal Platform Engineer

Your Company: As the Nonprofit Marketing Platform trusted by over 1,300 nonprofits , Feathr is purpose-built to help our customers unlock more results, time, and confidence. Feathr's software marketing platform equips nonprofits with the tools they need to build purposeful connections with their community and grow impact with confidence. We're working on building an amazing culture at Feathr, where amazing people (like you) can do their best work. If you're ready to grow and "help the helpers" you've come to the right place. Principal Platform Engineer Compensation $145,000 - $165,000 base, and a bonus potential of up to 12% Benefits: Fully Remote, Health/ Dental/ Vision, Paid Holidays/ Vacation/ Sick time, and more! Your Work: As a Principal Platform Engineer, you serve as a technical anchor on the Platform Engineering Team, driving architectural decisions, leading complex initiatives, and raising the bar for how we build and operate infrastructure. You sit at the intersection of deep individual contribution and technical leadership: you're hands-on in the work while also shaping how the team approaches problems, mentoring engineers, and partnering cross-functionally to ensure our systems are reliable, secure, and built to scale. This is a high-trust, high-ownership role for an engineer who wants to lead through technical excellence. Your Experience: 7+ years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure management, or a similar role, with a track record of leading complex technical initiatives end to end. Demonstrated experience owning and advancing system architecture; not just maintaining existing infrastructure, but meaningfully improving it. Professional experience building APIs, writing production-grade scripts, and making substantive contributions to shared codebases beyond configuration and deployment work. Proven ability to influence technical direction and mentor engineers without direct authority. Experience collaborating with and presenting to non-technical stakeholders, translating infrastructure needs into business terms. Technical Requirements Deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, networking, and/or database management. Strong technical expertise in cloud services, networking, and/or database management. Solid understanding of security protocols, compliance frameworks, and operational best practices. Advanced experience with CI/CD pipelines, containerization (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible). Solid understanding of industry standards and compliance requirements, including ISO, SOC, or other relevant certifications. Preferred: Experience with Elasticsearch and SQL, for operational reporting and data visibility. Preferred: Experience with AI/ML tooling, LLM integrations, or cross-functional AI enablement initiatives. Your Qualities: Technical Leadership: You set the standard. You make architectural calls, document your reasoning, and bring others along. Strategic Thinking : You can zoom out. You understand how infrastructure decisions connect to organizational goals and plan with long-term needs in mind. Problem-Solving: You're the person others come to when a problem is genuinely hard. You're methodical under pressure and confident making decisions with incomplete information. Communication: You write clearly, speak credibly to both technical and non-technical audiences, and document in a way that actually gets used. Mentorship : You invest in the engineers around you through code review, pairing, and feedback that helps people grow.\ Collaboration: You work well across teams and functions. You understand that great infrastructure exists to serve the product and the people building it. Adaptability : You stay current, embrace change, and know how to help the team navigate ambiguity. Your Day: Technical Leadership & Architecture Lead the design and implementation of scalable, reliable, and secure system architecture across the platform. Serve as a technical decision-maker on major infrastructure initiatives, ensuring choices are well-reasoned, documented, and aligned with long-term goals. Identify and drive systemic improvements, proactively surfacing technical debt, reliability gaps, and opportunities to modernize. Set and uphold engineering standards for the team, including documentation practices, incident response protocols, and operational hygiene. Infrastructure & Operations: Own and optimize cloud infrastructure, networking, and database systems for high availability and performance. Implement and monitor security protocols to protect systems against vulnerabilities and maintain compliance with applicable standards. Manage and continuously refine CI/CD pipelines to support reliable, efficient software deployments. Lead incident response efforts, diagnosing issues quickly, coordinating resolution, and driving post-incident reviews that prevent recurrence. Technical Contribution: Make meaningful, hands-on contributions to shared codebases, including tooling, automation, and systems improvements that go beyond configuration work. Debug and resolve complex technical issues, providing direct support for environment setup and system optimization. Develop and maintain internal tools and processes that improve team productivity and system reliability. AI Enablement: Partner with cross-functional teams to evaluate, integrate, and operationalize AI tooling across the organization. Help establish infrastructure patterns and best practices that support AI adoption at scale. Mentorship & Team Development Mentor and coach engineers on the platform team, providing technical guidance, thoughtful code review, and support for professional growth. Help onboard new team members and contribute to building a culture of technical rigor and collaborative problem-solving. Contribute to hiring efforts, participating in interviews and helping evaluate candidates against technical bar. Documentation and Compliance: Create and maintain detailed, accessible documentation of systems, processes, and architectural decisions. Perform regular audits and updates to ensure ongoing adherence to ISO, SOC, or other applicable compliance standards. Collaboration and Support: Work closely with software engineers, project managers, designers, and other stakeholders to ensure seamless integration and operational support for new features. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to maintain consistent and reproducible development environments. Participate in incident response efforts, helping to minimize downtime and ensure quick recovery from system disruptions. Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice. Compensation: Starting salary for this position is $145,000 annually depending on experience and credentials, with the potential to earn an additional 12% of base salary. Location: This role is open to remote candidates located within the United States, with a preference for those in the EST or CST time zones. There is also an option to work from our headquarters in Gainesville, FL. If you aren’t familiar, Gainesville is a hip, mid-sized city with a highly innovative population and an attainable standard of living. Interview Process: As a part of our commitment to creating a fair, equitable, and positive interview experience for all candidates, we offer full transparency of our interview stages to give applicants an idea of the time and effort involved. Additionally, each interview stage consists of standardized questions and rubrics with a scoring system to ensure a consistent and fair assessment practice of all candidates. Information Screen - The Talent Acquisition Team will invite candidates that move forward to a 20-30 minute virtual interview. This conversation will be focused on relevant work experience, compensation, role overview, and answering any questions the candidate has. Hiring Manager Interview - 45 minute virtual meeting with to answer role-specific questions and dive deeper into your background and experience. Work Assignment - Candidates will be given a work assignment prompt to complete a project that is relevant to the work they can expect in the role. You are given ample amount of time to complete this project before turning in. Panel Interview - 1 hour interview with two to three key members of the team. This interview will dive deeper into the role, technical knowledge, and requirements of the position. You will also utilize this time to review any questions related to your work assignment. Offer - The Talent Acquisition Team will reach out with the details of the offer to discuss with the candidate. Interviewing at Feathr We've prepared a comprehensive candidate resource that provides valuable insights and tips for interviewing at Feathr. It covers everything from common interview questions to helpful advice on how to make the most of your interview experience with us. Access the resource here . We encourage all applicants to take advantage of this resource to help prepare for their interviews and gain a deeper understanding of what to expect when applying to join our Flock. Benefits & Perks for full-time employees We love our Flock and the work they do! But let’s be honest, life isn’t just about work. So we created a perks and benefits package that aims to help our team grow by including their wellness, families, passions, and personal time. Fully remote Full vision, dental, and ~99% health insurance for employees Sick time off Vacation time off Extended Wintr Break Parental Leave Wellness Reimbursement Credit Home Office Stipend Professional Development Budget Team hangouts and events Culture: Feathr defines culture as the secret sauce that makes our flock members want to come to work everyday and do their best work. Like every company, we have an acronym that conveys the most important aspects of the culture we strive to have. Practicality: Progress Over Perfection Ambition: When Feathr wins, We all win Candor: Better communication, Better results Trust: Assume the best, Share openly Service: We exist to fix This acronym is only as useful as the integrity of the people who reference it and believe in it. Every person at Feathr will face challenges, the most important quality is a commitment to work through those challenges with self-awareness and honesty. Feathr is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive and equitable environment for all employees. So, however you identify and whatever background you bring with you, if you think you’d drive value in this position, please apply.