Senior Platform Engineer

Who you are

• We're looking for a professional team player who thrives in an environment where we share knowledge openly and push each other to deliver the best possible outcome
• You have run production infrastructure for years, ideally as the person who owned it end to end rather than one of many in a large ops team
• Kubernetes and Terraform in production: cluster upgrades, Helm, GitOps, and infrastructure as code for a whole cloud estate
• Production experience on Azure or AWS. Most of our estate is Azure, so an AWS background works if you are willing to go deep on Azure
• Active Python skills: you read and debug a Python codebase and fix the application when the application is what is broken
• Security as a habit: you have run patch management, handled pentest findings and designed least-privilege access, and you prioritise findings pragmatically
• You write clearly: runbooks, incident write-ups and architecture decisions that others can follow
• Fluent English (engineering runs in English, so German is not required, though it can help in some customer and vendor conversations)

What the job involves

• As Senior Platform Engineer, you own the platform that Workist's AI agents run on: two clouds, the Kubernetes clusters for production, staging and ML workloads, and the path from merge request to production for every service we ship
• You decide how this platform evolves, you keep it secure, observable and cost-efficient, and you extend it as the product grows
• Most recently that meant an LLM gateway with region failover in front of our Azure OpenAI deployments, and performing GPU capacity planning for our own models
• You set your own roadmap
• Infrastructure at Workist is run as quarterly themes that you propose, make the case for and deliver, and roughly a third of your time goes to whatever the week brings: an incident, a pentest finding, a developer whose deployment is stuck and needs a second pair of eyes
• You report to our CTO and are the voice of the platform in engineering decisions
• Everything runs on Kubernetes (Azure AKS), deployed with Helm and GitOps/Flux. All infrastructure is Terraform, applied through CI
• CI/CD for every service on GitLab
• Managed services wherever they keep life simple: Postgres, OpenSearch, Redis, blob storage. We self-host only where it clearly pays off
• Two clouds: Azure as our primary cloud, AWS for search and mail ingestion
• Python everywhere: read and fix application code when that is where the fix belongs
• Security is routine: automated scanning in every pipeline, regular external pentests, quarterly backup and disaster-recovery tests
• Own the architecture of our cloud environments across Azure and AWS: how subscriptions, networks, identities and environments are structured and stay isolated
• Design and deliver the platform capabilities the product needs next, from GPU capacity and an LLM gateway to new environments
• Set the standard for how we run Kubernetes and our managed data services: capacity planned ahead of growth, changes and upgrades rolled out safely and routinely, costs kept in check
• Own the security posture end to end: least-privilege access, network isolation, findings from scanners and pentests, and a patch cadence that runs itself. Be a technical counterpart for audits and security questionnaires
• Own observability and alerting so that every alert is worth acting on, and lead the response to platform incidents including the follow-up fixes
• Run quarterly backup/restore and disaster-recovery tests, and close what they reveal
• Own the path from merge request to production: fast builds, reliable deployments, environments and access on demand
• Build the infrastructure behind our AI models: the LLM gateway, model deployments with region failover, GPU capacity, and whatever the next model needs

Benefits

• Through strong personal responsibility from day one, you will actively shape a SaaS startup in the early phase
• 30 days annual leave
• BVG ticket or JobRad for the way to work
• Annual budget for personal development
• Tools of your choice
• Flexible home office plan and the opportunity to work completely remotely outside of Germany for 4 weeks a year
• Regular team events, fresh fruit and drinks in our modern office in Berlin Mitte
• Competitive salary, detailed individual feedback discussions and great development opportunities
• Working in a flat hierarchy with an open and transparent culture of communication
• Participation in the (Virtual) Stock Option Plan