Staff Engineer (backend) in San Jose

Platform9 is looking for a Staff Engineer to join our engineering team. In this role, you will be a technical authority for one or more core components, driving architecture, design, and delivery of complex initiatives end-to-end. You are the person the team turns to - the one who ensures your domain is well-built, well-documented, and continuously improving. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role for engineers who thrive on technical depth and taking full accountability for outcomes.

What You'll Do

Technical Leadership

• Serve as the domain expert for your component - the go-to person for technical questions, design decisions, and architectural guidance
• Lead design and architecture for major features within your ownership area, producing detailed technical specifications and architecture documents
• Own and maintain public-facing documentation for your component, ensuring it is complete and updated with every release
• Evaluate and recommend technology choices that align with team and product goals

Strategy & Innovation

• Define technical architecture and approach for 3-12 month initiatives within your domain
• Lead projects with significant technical complexity or business impact, translating ambiguous requirements into clear engineering plans

Execution & Impact

• Take end-to-end ownership of your component across design, architecture, UI, testing, upgrades, scaling, and implementation - the buck stops with you
• Lead and participate in customer triage calls, driving timely resolution and using that feedback to improve your component
• Engage with vendors and partners on integrations related to your components when needed
• Deliver strategic initiatives on time, within release deadlines, and with high quality
• Keep stakeholders informed through regular Jira updates and proactive communication
• Participate in strategic conversations around architecture and scaling, proposing design changes to meet evolving requirements

Team & Culture

• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, investing in their technical growth and career development
• Help define and uphold the engineering hiring bar through active participation in recruiting
• Contribute to building a high-performing, collaborative engineering culture

• 8-12+ years of software engineering experience
• Proven track record of delivering complex, high-impact projects
• Deep expertise in at least one major technical domain, with broad knowledge across multiple areas

Core Technical Skills

• Expert-level programming in one or more of: Python, Go, Java, C++
• Strong system design and distributed systems architecture capabilities
• Experience operating and debugging large-scale infrastructure
• Ability to diagnose and resolve complex production issues under pressure

Platform9-Specific Domain Knowledge

Deep expertise in 2-3 of the following areas is required:

• Virtualization
• Containers and Kubernetes (K8s)
• OpenStack
• Networking and SDNs
• Storage
• Cloud Platform (VMware, AWS, GCP, Azure)

Energy Jobline is the largest and fastest growing global Energy Job Board and Energy Hub. We have an audience reach of over 7 million energy professionals, 400,000+ monthly advertised global energy and engineering jobs, and work with the leading energy companies worldwide. We focus on the Oil & Gas, Renewables, Engineering, Power, and Nuclear markets as well as emerging technologies in EV, Battery, and Fusion. We are committed to ensuring that we offer the most exciting career opportunities from around the world for our jobseekers., Platform9: Private Clouds Made Easy Platform9 is the leader in simplifying enterprise Private Clouds. Founded by a team of VMware cloud pioneers, we are dedicated to transforming IT operations. Our flagship product, Private Cloud Director, turns your existing hardware into a full-featured, future-ready private cloud. We innovate across what we build and how we deliver it, staying focused on a next-, open private cloud while holding ourselves to one standard: exceptional customer outcomes. Enterprises are selecting Platform9 to replace legacy virtualization because it eliminates operational risk and complexity. Private Cloud Director is designed for the experienced infrastructure team, offering a familiar GUI experience for managing VMs and containers, seamless integration with your existing hardware and third-party storage, and critical enterprise features (HA/DR, scale, reliability) built-in. This enables IT teams to gain robust API control and a user experience they trust-rooted in customer obsession and an owner's mindset. We share context quickly and candidly to keep decisions moving. With over 30,000 nodes in production at some of the world's largest enterprises, including Cloudera, EBSCO, Juniper Networks, and Rackspace, Platform9 is the proven path to achieving true vendor independence and operational consistency. We are an inclusive, globally distributed company backed by prominent investors, supported by a partner ecosystem of resellers, systems integrators, MSPs, and technology vendors committed to driving private cloud innovation and efficiency. Our values-innovation, customer obsession, ownership, radical candor, and excellence-guide how we build and support every deployment.