Principal Platform Engineer

Gradial is a Seattle-based startup enabling digital experiences at the speed of thought. We empower marketers and creatives to implement their ideas directly, with software that adapts over time. Our platform automates website and design system updates, large-scale migrations to new design systems, and continuous content optimization while adhering to company and product brands.

Backed by world class investors, we’re looking to scale our platform and expand our team. At Gradial, we operate with extreme ownership, bias towards action and critical path planning. We tackle problems from first principles, question assumptions, and find creative solutions. If you want to take risks, work on groundbreaking technology, and see the direct impact of your work, Gradial is where you belong.

The Role

As a Principal Platform Engineer at Gradial, you will shape the foundation our platform runs on as we scale. You will work closely with the CTO and engineering team to make our systems faster, more resilient, and easier to operate in a high-growth environment. This is a hands-on individual contributor leadership role for someone who wants real ownership, high leverage, and the opportunity to define how platform reliability looks at an AI-native company.

What You’ll Own

• Own the reliability, scalability, and operational health of Gradial’s production platform.
• Lead the evolution of Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure as code across the stack.
• Set the standard for how we design, ship, and operate reliable systems.
• Build the tooling and automation that help engineers move faster with more confidence.
• Drive improvements in monitoring, alerting, incident response, and service readiness.
• Partner with engineering to identify scaling risks early and solve them before they slow us down.
• Influence the long-term direction of our platform across reliability, security, performance, and cost.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure, SRE, DevOps, or related roles with direct ownership of production systems.
• Proven success designing and operating production-grade infrastructure in fast-moving, high-growth environments.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, and container orchestration.
• Strong experience with infrastructure as code, GitOps, CI/CD workflows, and modern deployment practices.
• Strong command of observability and reliability fundamentals across metrics, logging, tracing, alerting, and incident response.
• A track record of leading through influence, making sound technical decisions, and raising the bar across engineering teams.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with AI or ML infrastructure, including GPU provisioning, model deployment, or compute-intensive workloads.
• Experience supporting cloud or multi-cloud environments with a focus on resilience and scale.
• Comfort with TypeScript or Python for internal tooling and operational automation.

You'll thrive here if you...

• Learn quickly and actively seek out new challenges.
• Embrace AI as a core tool for problem-solving, creativity and scale.
• Show a strong work ethic, high ownership and bias toward action.
• Communicate clearly, directly and with curiosity.
• Thrive in fast-paced, hyper-growth environments where building better > maintaining status quo.

What we offer

• Meaningful equity and competitive salary
• Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
• Fast-paced environment with autonomy and ownership
• Real impact, zero bureaucracy
• A front-row seat to building category-defining AI infrastructure

AI Literacy & Interviewing Tools

As an AI-first company, we prioritize AI literacy as a core competency in our hiring decisions. We’re excited by candidates who thoughtfully apply AI tools in their work, but during interviews we’re focused on you. This is your opportunity to show how you think, communicate, and solve problems. Over-reliance on AI-generated responses during the interview process (especially when it obscures your own voice) will result in disqualification. We want to understand your unique perspective and how you approach challenges, both with and without AI.

Privacy Policy

By submitting your application to Gradial, you acknowledge that any personal data you provide will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy. This includes the collection, use, and storage of your information for the purposes of evaluating your qualifications and communicating with you about your candidacy. We handle applicant data with care and in compliance with applicable data protection laws.

If you have any questions about how your information is used, please refer to our Privacy Policy or contact us directly.

Applicants who require reasonable accommodation to participate in the application or interview process should contact us at careers@gradial.com to request assistance.

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