Principal Platform Engineer

The infrastructure you build will determine whether millions of Americans can access college. You’ll design the platform that deploys and operates studentaid.gov — the system processing $120 billion in federal aid each year.

You’ll architect and maintain the platform infrastructure that handles:

Zero-downtime deployments when “downtime” means families can’t pay tuition

Traffic spikes from 0 to millions of concurrent users in hours, not days

CI/CD pipelines that must meet federal security requirements while staying fast

Infrastructure-as-code managing hundreds of services across multiple environments

Observability for systems where a 3-hour outage affects millions of families

This is a hands-on technical leadership role — you won’t code every day, but when it matters, you’ll dive in to unblock teams and de-risk critical changes. The specific tech stack doesn’t matter — we need engineers who can work with and improve whatever technology serves the mission. Tasks may include:

Design and build deployment pipelines replacing manual release processes

Set technical standards for infrastructure and observability across teams

Make architectural decisions about cloud, containers, and service mesh

Eliminate deployment bottlenecks preventing teams from shipping quickly

Review PRs across multiple codebases, spotting failure modes and simplifying changes

Unblock teams by writing code when the mission demands it

We’re looking for engineers who’ve built at scale in complex environments — typically Staff+ at a strong engineering organization, with experience in most of the following:

Built or operated systems serving millions of users in production

Led cross-team technical initiatives over multiple quarters

Migrated or decomposed legacy systems while keeping critical workflows available

Stayed hands-on with code — you can still read a diff, trace a request, and ship a fix

Prioritized outcomes over process — you know when to push back on bureaucracy that slows delivery without adding value

Our interview process is fully remote, consisting of 3-5 conversations that assess work experience, fit, and technical skills.