Senior Platform Engineer

Summary

Join Upwork as a Sr. Platform Engineer and lead initiatives modernizing the foundational infrastructure, enhancing the developer experience, and building scalable Kubernetes-based systems. You will streamline service deployments, influence the future of microservices and AI/ML environments, and collaborate with various teams. Responsibilities include leading modernization efforts in Kubernetes, transitioning from legacy infrastructure, enhancing the Backstage developer portal, defining and implementing observability practices, partnering with AI/ML teams, designing self-service templates, and collaborating on troubleshooting. The ideal candidate possesses proven success managing Kubernetes infrastructure at scale, experience leading migrations, strong knowledge of observability tooling, familiarity with machine learning infrastructure, and a proactive, developer-first mindset. Upwork offers a remote-first work environment with benefits including comprehensive medical coverage, unlimited PTO, a 401(k) plan with matching, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

Requirements

• Proven success managing Kubernetes infrastructure at scale, including use of service mesh technologies and GitOps workflows
• Experience leading migration and modernization efforts across complex, large-scale systems
• Strong knowledge of observability tooling and practices, including distributed tracing and SLOs
• Familiarity with machine learning infrastructure patterns, including model serving and monitoring
• A proactive, developer-first mindset focused on enabling teams through documentation, tooling, and streamlined workflows

Responsibilities

• Lead modernization efforts across Kubernetes environments to improve scalability, reliability, and developer productivity
• Drive the transition from legacy infrastructure, reducing operational complexity and aligning with standardized deployment practices
• Enhance and expand the Backstage developer portal to unify CI/CD pipelines, observability, and service management tools
• Define and implement observability practices including metrics, logging, and tracing that reduce incident response times and improve system insights
• Partner with AI/ML teams to ensure infrastructure readiness for scalable model deployment and reproducibility of pipelines
• Design and maintain self-service templates, infrastructure blueprints, and rollout guides to promote engineering best practices
• Collaborate across platform teams to troubleshoot systemic issues and continuously improve service health and performance

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical coverage for you and your family
• Unlimited PTO
• A 401(k) plan with matching
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• An Employee Stock Purchase Plan