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Robots & Pencils is a digital innovation firm that help clients use mobile, web, and AI technologies to transform their organizations.

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Robots & Pencils is a pioneering digital innovation firm at the forefront of technological advancement. We specialize in helping businesses transform and thrive in the age of unprecedented technological acceleration. Our team of hyper-skilled experts, known as Robots & Pencils, combines the sciences with the humanities to deliver cutting-edge solutions. With a focus on strategy, we provide ideas and insights that drive business transformation, future-proofing organizations by unlocking unknown potential. Our human-first approach creates delightful user experiences that inspire and engage. With deep platform expertise, our in-house talent crafts each line of code, bringing the biggest and boldest ideas to life. We work with global clients across industries, including education, financial services, healthcare, high tech, retail, and consumer goods. Join us and be part of a talent-led culture that pioneers innovation and creates previously inconceivable products. Contact Robots & Pencils today and let us transform your business for the Next Normal.

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Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.

We've earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate. Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.

# Staff Platform Engineer

**Location:** Remote in Canada

**Contract Duration:** 4 month contract assignment with potential to extend

## Position Overview

We're looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to define and lead platform engineering strategy across complex, multi-environment cloud systems. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who can own infrastructure architecture end-to-end, drive DevSecOps and compliance practices, and serve as a technical leader on the engagements they support.

In this role, you will work as a key technical contributor on a cross-functional team, defining standards and owning platform reliability, performance, and security at scale. You'll mentor engineers, partner with leadership on infrastructure direction, and lead complex migrations and modernization initiatives.

## What You'll Do

### Craft & Delivery

- Define DevOps strategy and lead infrastructure architecture across multi-environment, multi-region cloud systems
- Architect and own scalable Kubernetes platforms and containerized infrastructure at scale
- Own infrastructure as code strategy and standards across environments
- Lead DevSecOps implementation including secrets management, compliance, auditing, IAM, and zero-trust networking
- Drive platform reliability, performance SLAs, and cost optimization across production systems
- Lead complex cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives
- Own observability strategy and production reliability practices
- Lead the design and operation of AI/ML platform infrastructure, including model serving and deployment, GPU workload orchestration, LLM gateway and observability, vector store infrastructure, and CI/CD for AI/ML systems
- Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace

### Collaboration & Communication

- Partner with engineering, product, and leadership to align platform strategy with business and delivery goals
- Communicate complex infrastructure decisions and tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Lead design reviews, architecture discussions, and release readiness assessments

### Leadership & Influence

- Establish platform engineering standards and best practices on the engagements you support
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, helping them grow their craft, confidence, and impact
- Act as a technical escalation point on complex infrastructure and platform challenges
- Evaluate emerging tools and technologies, recommending patterns that improve platform reliability and developer experience

## What You'll Bring

- 7+ years of professional DevOps or platform engineering experience, with experience leading complex platform initiatives
- Expert scripting and programming skills (e.g., Python, Go, Java, Bash)
- Deep cloud expertise across at least one major platform
- Expert Kubernetes and container orchestration skills
- Expert IaC skills across multiple tools
- Strong CI/CD architecture experience at scale
- Strong DevSecOps experience including secrets management, compliance, and auditing
- Experience with networking, IAM, security architecture, and zero-trust principles in cloud environments
- Experience with service mesh, distributed systems, and microservices architecture
- Strong experience with AI/ML platform infrastructure, including model serving and deployment, GPU workload orchestration, LLM gateway and observability, vector store infrastructure, and CI/CD for AI/ML systems
- Demonstrated leadership and technical mentoring experience across a team or organization
- Strong stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to translate technical depth across audiences
- Demonstrable, day-to-day usage and expert knowledge of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor
- Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate highly ambiguous technical and business challenges with sound judgment
- Cloud certifications (e.g., AWS DevOps Engineer Professional, CKA, Azure DevOps Engineer) or FinOps experience is a plus

## Helpful Extras and Unique Skills

- Designing and provision HPC cluster infrastructure using CI/CD pipeline across AWS, CoreWeave, GCP, and OCI
- Experience with HPC job schedulers and workload managers such as Slurm or equivalent for job submission and queue management

## You'll Do Well Here if You Are

- **A doer.** You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.
- **A fast learner who knows you don't know everything.** The AI landscape changes weekly. You're senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.
- **Direct in a way that makes the work better.** You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.
- **Obsessed with craft.** You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don't put your name on work you wouldn't stand behind.
- **Built for ownership.** You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.
- **All in.** You treat clients' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.
- **Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight.** Constraints don't slow you down. They sharpen you.
- **Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do.** Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.

🌐 International Headhunter | HR Consultant | Hiring Across All Levels & Domains | North America, Europe, Asia & South America

Madeleine Barthelmess

Head of Talent Attraction

Resource and Operations Manager at Robots & Pencils

Sarah Hamilton

Resource and Operations Manager

Global Talent Acquisition | Lead Recruiter at Robots and Pencils

Jill Siegel

Lead Recruiter

Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist

Lead AI Recruiter

Job Application for Staff Platform Engineer at Robots and Pencils

Lead Platform Engineer

DevOps

Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops

Kubernetes

Infrastructure as Code

Digital Agency

Scaleup

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer for a 4-month remote contract in Canada, with potential extension. The role involves leading platform engineering strategy, driving DevSecOps, and mentoring engineers.

Fractional Staff Platform Engineer

Engineering

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Fractional Staff Platform Engineer

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