Lead Platform Engineer

About the company Our client is an early-stage technology company. The role Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Act as the most senior engineer on a core data platform, guiding architecture, security and reliability decisions. The work combines hands-on backend development with mentoring and helping shape a growing engineering team. What you'll do - Lead the technical direction, delivery and scaling of a central data platform. - Build and run the services that bring in varied inputs, expose them through APIs and store them reliably. - Operate the graph database and search components that power advanced retrieval use cases. - Develop high-throughput backend services in Go and Python. - Plan platform security from the ground up, covering access between services, customer separation, credential handling and data protection. - Manage cloud infrastructure, automated delivery pipelines and monitoring, and set reliability targets and shared developer tooling. - Raise engineering standards through design guidance, code review and coaching. - Partner with company leadership to interview candidates and hire engineers as the team expands. Requirements What we're looking for - 5+ years of hands-on experience with production backend systems, data platforms or large-scale distributed services (3+ for exceptional candidates). - A record of leading design, security and scaling decisions for a core platform. - Experience bringing structure and discipline to young engineering environments. - Strong working knowledge of container orchestration, infrastructure as code and modern CI/CD tooling. - Experience building data pipelines that handle messy, varied source data. - Experience at well-regarded engineering organizations or startups. - Ability to work on-site in San Francisco, CA, five days a week. - Legal authorization to work in the United States. Bonus points - Exposure to scientific or life sciences data. - Familiarity with formal security or compliance certification efforts. Benefits Compensation and benefits - Base salary: USD 220,000 to 300,000 per year - Equity - Health, dental and vision coverage - Life and disability insurance - Retirement plan - Paid parental leave - Flexible time off and paid holidays - Paid sick leave - Learning budget - Relocation support Location and work model - San Francisco, CA, United States - On-site, 5 days per week in office - Full-time