What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Platform Engineer position at Wag Walking?
About the role
We are looking for a senior platform engineer to drive the core platform, infrastructure, and developer tooling behind our products. This role is both hands-on and strategic: you will design and implement core systems, define the platform roadmap, and work across engineering teams to ensure we have a secure, reliable, and scalable foundation.
You’ll report directly to the CTO and be trusted to identify problems, set direction, and execute solutions without day-to-day oversight. You’ll partner with engineering managers across PHP, Python, and mobile/web platforms, but you will be responsible for the architectural vision and execution across the company.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement complex and critical backend systems such as payment processing and authentication systems in the core Wag backend application
- Design cross-platform and cross-team system architecture
- Design and implement efficient build and deployment pipelines, containerization (Docker, Gitlab CI/CD), and developer tooling to improve productivity
- Incorporate AI powered solutions to support platform quality and developer productivity
- Define and maintain the platform roadmap, balancing reliability, developer productivity, technical debt, and cost
- Design the bug detection and triage tooling
and procedures - Contribute infrastructure as code using Terraform
- Design and drive incident response procedures including observability and on-call tooling
- Serve as a trusted technical owner for key backend systems
- Mentor engineers on infrastructure and platform best practices
- Ensure Security & Compliance in platform design in partnership with Security Manager
- Own the data engineering and analytics platform design
- Participate in on-call incident response for key systems
KPIs:
- Code and App Quality: Bug regression rate, app quality, platform performance
- System Reliability: Uptime and MTTR
- Velocity Enablers: CI/CD speed, developer productivity metrics
- Technical Hygiene: Reduction in systemic debt, roadmap progress on platform initiatives
- Cross-team Alignment: % projects conforming to standards
Qualifications
- Willingness to roll up your sleeves and move from planning to execution with a small team
- Significant backend software development experience
- Familiarity with PHP and Python
- Strong experience with containerization (Docker) and CI/CD pipeline design
- Expertise designing and maintaining cloud infrastructure; ideally in AWS
- Proficiency with Terraform (or equivalent IaC tools) for managing infrastructure
- Strong experience with containerization (Docker) and CI/CD pipeline design
- Proven ability to design complex and reliable systems with minimal oversight
- Experience driving cross-team initiatives and influencing technical direction
- Solid understanding of reliability engineering, monitoring, and incident management
- Excellent communication skills and ability to work with multiple engineering teams
About Wag! Group Co.
Wag! Group Co. strives to be the number one platform to solve the service, product, and wellness needs of the modern U.S. pet household. Wag! pioneered on-demand dog walking in 2015 with the Wag! app, which offers access to 5-star dog walking, sitting, and one-on-one training from a community of over 500,000 Pet Caregivers nationwide. In addition, Wag! Group Co. operates Petted, one of the nation’s largest pet insurance comparison marketplaces; Dog Food Advisor, one of the most visited and trusted pet food review platforms; WoofWoofTV, a multi-media company bringing delightful pet content to over 18 million followers across social media; and maxbone, a digital platform for modern pet essentials. For more information, visit Wag.co.
