Senior Platform Engineer

Company Overview

• Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.
• We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

Position Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Platform Engineer to lead the design and delivery of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD systems, and platform tooling across complex engineering environments. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who can architect cloud-native solutions end-to-end, enjoys hands-on development, and is growing into owning platform strategy and DevSecOps practices.

In this role, you will work as part of a cross-functional team, designing and operating scalable infrastructure, driving observability and cost management, and embedding security and compliance throughout the delivery process. You’ll collaborate closely with engineering, QA, and product teams to deliver reliable systems and develop the technical instincts that come from shipping things that matter.

Why This Role Matters

At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.

Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.

What You’ll Do

Craft & Delivery

Lead design and implementation of CI/CD pipelines end-to-end, driving quality and reliability across delivery workflows

Architect and implement cloud-native infrastructure solutions for scalability, resilience, and cost efficiency

Design and manage Kubernetes clusters and containerized workloads at scale

Implement and own infrastructure as code across environments

Drive observability, performance optimization, and alerting across production systems

Implement DevSecOps practices including security scanning, secrets management, and access control

Lead production incident response, root cause analysis, and post-mortems

Design and operate AI/ML platform infrastructure, including model serving and deployment, GPU workload orchestration, LLM gateway and observability, vector store infrastructure, and CI/CD for AI/ML systems

Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace

Collaboration & Communication

Collaborate with engineering, QA, and product teams across the full SDLC to align infrastructure with delivery goals

Communicate technical tradeoffs and infrastructure decisions clearly across functions

Participate actively in design reviews, sprint ceremonies, and release planning

Leadership & Influence

Lead platform work end-to-end with growing ownership of infrastructure strategy

Contribute to platform standards and best practices that lift reliability and consistency across the team

Begin mentoring junior engineers, sharing knowledge and supporting their growth

What You’ll Bring

5–7 years of professional DevOps or platform engineering experience with growing ownership of infrastructure

Strong scripting and programming skills (e.g., Python, Go, Bash)

Hands-on cloud expertise across at least one major platform with multi-service understanding

Strong Kubernetes and container orchestration experience

Strong IaC expertise

Strong CI/CD pipeline design and ownership experience

Experience with observability stacks

Experience with networking, security, and IAM in cloud environments

Familiarity with microservices and distributed systems architecture

Experience with AI/ML platform infrastructure, including model serving and deployment, GPU workload orchestration, LLM gateway and observability, vector store infrastructure, and CI/CD for AI/ML systems

Demonstrable, day-to-day usage of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor

Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguous technical challenges with sound judgment

Experience with service mesh, multi-cloud or hybrid environments, or a cloud certification is a plus

You’ll Do Well Here if You Are

A doer. You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.

A fast learner who knows you don't know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You're senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.

Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.

Obsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don't put your name on work you wouldn't stand behind.

Built for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.

All in. You treat clients' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.

Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don't slow you down. They sharpen you.

Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.

We Offer

20 days of paid vacation.

15 days of unpaid vacation.

All official public holidays off.

5 paid sick days without a doctor's certificate.

Medical insurance.

Military draft deferment (reservation) support.

Cooperation under a gig-contract.