Platform Engineer (Azure Platform)

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.

• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.

• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Agency, Velocity, Craft, and Truth. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

You are a software engineer interested in the systems behind reliable cloud products. You enjoy automation, production debugging, and improving the experience of engineers who should not need to understand every infrastructure detail to ship safely.

You are curious, pragmatic, and ready to take end-to-end ownership of well-scoped platform work while growing your judgment across Azure, Kubernetes, reliability, and developer tooling.

**We are seeking teammates who are based in the United Kingdom

About the Role

You will help build and operate the Azure platform used by Phaidra’s product and AI engineering teams. You will own scoped platform components from implementation through production operation, working within an established architecture and improving it through what you learn.

This role contributes directly to Phaidra’s next phase of growth. Expanding our platform into Azure requires reusable infrastructure, dependable deployment workflows, and developer-facing automation rather than manual cloud work. The systems you build will make it possible for other engineers to deploy and operate software safely without needing to become Azure specialists.

What You’ll Work On

The Platform team works across the areas below. Your work will span this surface based on company priorities, bringing particular depth in Azure.

1. Azure foundations

   • Implement and maintain Azure infrastructure for networking, identity, secrets, storage, policy, monitoring, and AKS.

   • Build reusable Terraform and configuration components using team standards.

   • Test changes and document supported usage, failure modes, and rollback procedures.

2. Platform software and delivery

   • Extend golden paths, service templates, and self-service environment workflows for Azure.

   • Extend Phaidra’s existing GitLab CI, ArgoCD, and Crossplane workflows to provision and deploy services on Azure.

   • Contribute to Python or Go libraries, CLIs, APIs, and automation that reduce manual platform work.

3. Reliability and operations

   • Add metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerts, and runbooks to the systems you touch.

   • Participate in the Platform on-call rotation with support from experienced engineers.

   • Diagnose incidents, fix recurring problems, and complete follow-up work.

4. Security defaults

   • Apply established controls for identity, secrets, network isolation, image provenance, and least privilege.

   • Partner with senior engineers and security when requirements or ownership boundaries are unclear.

5. Internal customer feedback

   • Work with product and AI engineers to understand friction in Azure deployment and operations.

   • Turn recurring requests into documented, reusable platform capabilities.

Key Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience in software engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, or a similar role.

• Hands-on experience deploying or operating production workloads in Azure.

• Working knowledge of several core Azure areas: AKS, Entra ID, virtual networks, private endpoints, Key Vault, managed identities, Azure Policy, storage, or Azure Monitor.

• Experience with Terraform or another infrastructure-as-code tool.

• Experience with containers and Kubernetes, including deploying and debugging workloads.

• Programming ability in Python, Go, or another high-level language.

• Familiarity with CI/CD and Git-based delivery workflows.

• Ability to own scoped work, ask precise questions, and communicate clearly in a remote team.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience with GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis, Kapitan, Helm, or Kustomize.

• Exposure to another major cloud and an interest in multi-cloud platform design.

• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or Azure Monitor.

• Familiarity with cloud networking, identity, or security fundamentals.

• Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure or data-intensive systems.

• Contributions to internal developer platforms, service templates, or developer tooling.

Nice-to-haves

• Exposure to Azure Arc, hybrid networking, or private customer deployments.

• Contributions to Kubernetes operators or custom controllers.

• Familiarity with cloud cost analysis or FinOps practices.

Our Stack

• Languages: Python, Go, Bash

• Cloud: Azure and GCP

• Containers: Kubernetes, AKS, GKE

• IaC and configuration: Terraform, Kapitan, Crossplane, Helm/Kustomize

• Delivery: GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis

• Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Azure Monitor

Onboarding

In your first 30 days…

• Learn Phaidra’s products, Platform team, Azure architecture, engineering standards, and delivery workflows.

• Meet engineers who use the platform and understand how platform changes affect product and AI workloads.

• Set up the development environment and complete the team’s platform onboarding exercise.

• Follow a representative service through CI, deployment, Kubernetes operation, and observability.

• Build familiarity with the Azure foundations, Terraform modules, and GitOps workflows the team operates.

• Ship a small but meaningful Azure platform improvement with support from an experienced engineer.

• Shadow the Platform on-call rotation and learn the escalation paths and runbooks.

In your first 60 days…

• Contribute independently to Azure and general Platform work using the team’s development, review, and deployment practices.

• Own a scoped Azure component or workflow with tests, observability, documentation, and an operational runbook.

• Deliver the change through the standard infrastructure-as-code and GitOps path.

• Support a product or AI team using that capability and incorporate feedback into follow-up improvements.

• Participate in on-call with backup from an experienced engineer.

In your first 90 days…

• Deliver a meaningful platform improvement end-to-end, from understanding the problem through rollout and production operation.

• Work comfortably across several parts of the Platform team’s surface while bringing growing depth in Azure.

• Participate in on-call and complete at least one reliability or toil-reduction improvement based on operational experience.

• Be able to diagnose common failures across Azure, Kubernetes, deployment workflows, and observability with appropriate support for unfamiliar areas.

• Identify and propose a useful next improvement based on platform usage and feedback from internal engineering teams.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

1. Meeting with People Operations team member (30 minutes)

2. Meeting with Hiring Manager (30 minutes)

3. Platform Engineer Technical Interview (60 minutes)

4. Azure Technical Interview (60 minutes)

5. Cyber Enablement Interview: Controls Implementation (45 minutes)

6. Culture fit interview with one of Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes)

We use Kula as our hiring platform. During your interview, Kula's AI Notetaker will record a transcript of the meeting to allow the interviewer to focus on the interview, not the note taking.

Base Salary

UK Residents:

• Tier 1 (London): 75,977 GBP - 111,433 GBP

• Tier 2 (Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol): 71,508 GBP - 104,878 GBP

• Tier 3 (Smaller cities/rural areas): 67,038 GBP - 98,323 GBP

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for equity. Final salary will be determined based on several factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, expertise, education and location. In some cases, final compensation may fall outside the posted range. Salary ranges are regularly reviewed and may be adjusted in response to market trends.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced, team-oriented environment where your work directly shapes the company’s direction.

• We are a 100% remote company. 

• Competitive compensation & meaningful equity.

• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.

• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).

• Unlimited paid time off, with a required minimum of 20 days per year.

• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).

• Flexible stipends to support your workspace, well-being, and continued professional development.

• Company MacBook.

Please note: Not all of Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On being Remote

We take a thoughtful and intentional approach to remote collaboration. Inspired by pioneers like GitLab, we embrace proven best practices to foster an exceptional remote work environment. Our culture is documentation-first, and we prioritize asynchronous communication to support focus and flexibility across time zones. While we value independence, we stay closely connected through tools like Slack and video conferencing. Weekly all-hands meetings help us align and build strong relationships, and we regularly host virtual team-building activities and social events to maintain a sense of camaraderie.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#LI-Remote

To be considered for any position at Phaidra, you must submit an online application. This role will remain open until it is filled.

Phaidra only hires individuals who are legally authorized to work in the specified location(s) above. We do not provide employment sponsorship. Candidates requiring visa sponsorship, either now or in the future, are not eligible for hire.

Candidates who advance beyond the initial screening stage will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in order to continue through the interview process.

All employment offers are contingent upon successful completion of employment authorization verification and applicable background checks, in accordance with local laws and company policies.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.