What are the responsibilities and job description for the Platform Engineer position at Raise?
About Raise
Raise is at the forefront of revolutionizing the entire Gift Card (GC) ecosystem by bringing it onto the blockchain. With a decade-long dedication to this vision, Raise is poised to launch a groundbreaking network that directly connects brands with their customers. By eliminating intermediaries and empowering consumers and brands alike, Raise is reshaping the landscape of consumer-brand interactions.
Raise operates as a fully remote company, fostering a dynamic and inclusive work environment. Historically, we've garnered support from prominent institutions such as PayPal, NEA, and Accel. Guiding our endeavors is a seasoned founder, who has returned to lead the charge, backed by a highly experienced executive team.
The potential of our endeavor is staggering. With over $1 trillion spent annually on gift cards, and with digital and international markets driving double-digit growth, the opportunity for transformative impact is immense. At Raise, we are not just building a network; we are shaping the future of consumer-brand relationships.
Join us on this journey as we redefine the dynamics of commerce, ushering in a new era of empowerment and connectivity in the digital age.
About the Role: DevOps & Platform Engineer
We are looking for a hands-on Platform Engineer who can take ownership of our Kubernetes platform, CI/CD systems, and cloud infrastructure. You will design and run reliable, scalable environments. You will standardize how we build and deploy containers and work closely with engineering teams to ship quickly and safely. You will set technical standards, mentor teammates, and raise the overall quality of our platform.
If you enjoy hard problems, high-impact work, and strong collaboration, this is a great fit.
Responsibilities
- Kubernetes Platform and Deployments
- Own our EKS architecture and operations. Define deployment workflows using Helm or Kustomize. Manage GitOps with Argo CD or Flux. Build progressive delivery patterns such as blue-green and canary. Handle rollouts and rollbacks. Maintain PodDisruptionBudgets, resource limits, HPA and VPA settings, Cluster Autoscaler, and multi-environment promotions.
- Containerization and Supply Chain
- Standardize Docker and OCI images, multi-stage builds, tagging, versioning, and ECR flows. Enforce image scanning with tools like Trivy or Grype. Maintain SBOMs with Syft. Manage signing and provenance in CI/CD.
- Infrastructure Design and Optimization
- Architect highly available and cost-efficient AWS environments including VPC, networking, ALB and NLB, Route 53, RDS, ElastiCache, S3, and CloudFront. Identify bottlenecks early. Right-size compute, storage, and Kubernetes resource limits.
- IaC and Automation
- Build and maintain Terraform or Terragrunt modules. Set up drift detection and guardrails. Automate golden paths for new services, secrets bootstrapping, and day two operations. Promote policy as code using OPA, Gatekeeper, or Kyverno.
- Networking and Security
- Manage secure ingress and egress with ALB or NLB. Maintain CNI and network policies with Calico or Cilium. Support mTLS and service mesh patterns when needed. Enforce IAM least privilege, IRSA, KMS usage, and strong secrets hygiene.
- Observability and Reliability
- Provide metrics, logs, and traces through tools like Datadog, Prometheus, Loki, OpenTelemetry, and Jaeger. Define SLOs and SLIs. Create useful alerts and runbooks. Forecast capacity. Validate backups and disaster recovery with Velero or CSI.
- CI/CD
- Own secure CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions or similar tools. Manage artifact promotion, environment gating, and approvals. Integrate SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, SBOM generation, and policy checks.
- Cost and Capacity (FinOps)
- Monitor utilization and cost drivers. Tune autoscaling thresholds. Recommend savings plans or reserved instances. Forecast resource needs and spending.
- Incident Management and Support
- Lead on-call rotations and major incident calls. Run blameless post-mortems with clear corrective actions. Unblock developers quickly. Partner with teams, including Finance, on performance or cost issues. Enforce least privilege, key rotation, and evidence collection for audits.
Team Leadership and Collaboration
- Mentorship and Growth
- Coach SRE and platform engineers. Review designs. Promote strong documentation and operational excellence.
- Cross-Functional Partnership
- Work with product, data, and engineering teams to embed reliability best practices. Teach others how to use Kubernetes, GitOps, observability tools, and incident processes.
Core Skills & Qualifications
- Expert-level Kubernetes and EKS experience including workload design, Helm or Kustomize, GitOps, rollout strategies, resource tuning, PDBs, HPA, VPA, autoscaling, and cluster upgrades
- Deep knowledge of Docker and OCI images, secure builds, multi-stage images, ECR, and runtime security
- Strong AWS experience, especially VPC networking, IAM and IRSA, ALB or NLB, Route 53, S3, RDS, ElastiCache, CloudFront, KMS, and private networking
- Solid IaC and automation skills with production-grade Terraform or Terragrunt
- Skilled in secure CI/CD pipeline design, artifact management, versioning, promotions, and supply-chain security
- Strong observability background across metrics, logs, traces, alerting, SLOs, SLIs, and performance analysis
- Strong understanding of IAM, secrets management, vulnerability management, image scanning, and policy as code
- Experience with backup and restore validation, RTO and RPO planning, and clear runbooks
- Proven track record leading DevOps, SRE, or platform initiatives and running incident and post-mortem programs
Nice to Have
- Experience supporting Go microservices, Ruby on Rails, Flutter, and PostgreSQL at scale
- Familiarity with blockchain or web3 systems and event-driven architectures
- Experience using AI tools to improve engineering workflows, reliability, or automation
Benefits
Raise offers a comprehensive benefits package to all our employees, including:
- Comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, vision, discretionary 401(K) plan, company paid short term and long-term disability, and life insurance
- Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
- Raise Gives Back paid time off for volunteering
- Paid parental leave
- Voluntary benefits, such as Pet Insurance and Identity Protection
