Staff Platform Engineer, Connectivity

District Partners is deeply engaged with a growing technology company on a search for a Staff-level engineering leader for one of the most consequential roles on their infrastructure team. The hiring team is in the middle of scaling their delivery model from artisanal to repeatable, and they need a senior technical owner who can design the system that lets them grow without breaking. This role is the architecture and automation backbone behind everything else the team builds.

Why You'll Actually Care

The infrastructure layer between distributed systems and cloud services is the spine of the product. Today, every new deployment is more work than the last. The customer pipeline over the next 2 years is substantial, and the team is one or two architectural decisions away from being able to install and operate at a fraction of the time it takes today. You would be the engineer who makes that delivery system real: the patterns, the automation, the validation, and the standards that take infrastructure delivery from one-off to standardized. This is not a maintenance role. It is the architecture and tooling that the rest of the team builds and runs against.

The Basics

A growing technology company operating in a regulated, mission-critical infrastructure space. Engineering operates as a distributed team with a focused capability model. Backed by a track record of secure deployments into sensitive environments.

What You'll Be Owning

• The end-to-end technical strategy and architecture for the connectivity capability, from edge platforms back to cloud-side termination
• The delivery system itself: golden image patterns, declarative configuration, validation routines, and operational handoff standards that let new customer environments come online predictably
• The automation backbone (Python, Bash, Ansible-style tooling) that turns manual install work into repeatable pipelines
• Secure transit design across customer networks, on-prem appliances, and cloud connectivity endpoints, with Zero-Trust patterns embedded by default
• Network observability, link health, configuration drift detection, and the operational telemetry that keeps environments supportable at scale
• Cross-team alignment with platform, data, field, and operations stakeholders to translate product priorities into a coherent technical roadmap
• Mentorship and technical leadership across Senior and Engineer-level teammates through design reviews, code reviews, and standards-setting

The Environment

This is a development-focused Staff role on a small dev plus ops team. It is not the role that keeps existing infrastructure running day-to-day. It is the role that builds the system that lets the next wave of deployments come online without proportional effort. Approximately 60% of the role is deep technical contribution on the hardest implementations. Approximately 40% is mentorship, planning, and decomposing the roadmap into delegable units of work for the rest of the team. Expect to operate inside a small-company environment with real technology constraints, real compliance overhead, and very little tolerance for sloppy architecture. Additional mid-level and senior engineers are planned to grow the team beneath this hire over the coming year.

Must-Haves

• Strong networking fundamentals and applied experience
• Automation mindset; Python, Bash, or Ansible-style tooling at production quality
• Deep experience in Cisco-based environments OR Linux-based networking (a blend is welcome)

What You Bring To The Table

• 7+ years building, designing, and operating infrastructure automation in distributed environments, with meaningful time at a Staff or equivalent level
• Deep networking fundamentals: L2/L3 design, segmentation, routing where applicable, NAT, firewall policy, and secure transit
• Depth in one of: Cisco-based network platforms (IOS-XE, NX-OS, DevNet tooling) or Linux-based networking (nftables/iptables, FRR, kernel networking stack). A blend is welcome.
• Production-grade scripting and automation in Python and/or Bash; declarative IaC and configuration management (Ansible or equivalent)
• Experience designing secure connectivity patterns: site-to-site VPN, IPSec, WireGuard or equivalent, certificate-based mTLS, Zero-Trust architecture
• Pipeline-driven infrastructure delivery: CI/CD applied to network and host configuration, automated validation, rollback patterns
• Observability instrumentation for network and host state (metrics, logs, synthetic checks, drift detection)
• A track record of mentoring engineers, setting technical standards, and lifting team output beyond your own keyboard
• Ability to use AI tooling as an accelerator without depending on it for core technical thinking. Internal AI tool availability is constrained by contracting policy.

Nice To Have

• CCNP, CCIE, or AWS Advanced Networking certifications
• OT/ICS or critical infrastructure deployment experience
• Network automation frameworks: Ansible network modules, Nornir, NAPALM, Cisco DevNet, open-source routing stacks (FRR, BIRD)
• Hardware lifecycle and zero-touch deployment exposure
• PKI and certificate automation (step-ca, ACME, internal CA operations)
• Prior experience in federal or regulated industry environments
• Prior experience in a sub-100 person company, or comfort adapting from a larger org into one

A Few Things Worth Knowing

• Compensation: $180,000 to $265,000 base, depending on experience and location
• Location: Denver metro strongly preferred. Other US metros considered for the right candidate.
• Work model: hybrid for local candidates with regular in-office presence. Remote candidates should expect quarterly in-person team time at minimum, with more frequent travel for deployment-related work.
• US citizenship required. Must be able to obtain a federal network account, CAC, and Secret Clearance. Candidates may start without active clearance. Security-relevant certification (Security+, CISSP, or AWS security cert equivalent) required for production access within 30 to 90 days of hire.
• Engagement: direct hire, retained search