Staff Platform Engineer

About the role

We’re looking for a Lead Platform Engineer to join our Platform Engineering team in Sydney.

Our Platform Engineering team exists to amplify the impact of every engineering team at Stake. We build the foundations that enable teams to move quickly, operate reliably and scale with confidence. From cloud infrastructure and developer tooling to reliability, security and automation, we create the leverage that powers Stake’s growth.

As a Lead Platform Engineer, you’ll help shape the technical direction of our platform and infrastructure. You’ll partner with Engineering Leads, Staff Engineers and senior stakeholders across the business to solve complex platform challenges, define long-term architectural direction and create a developer experience that helps teams do their best work.

This is a highly influential role with people management responsibility for a small team. You’ll combine deep technical expertise with organisational leadership, driving initiatives across multiple teams and domains while helping raise the engineering bar across Stake.

We work in a hybrid model, spending three days a week in our beautiful, dog-friendly Sydney office.

What success looks like

• You’ve established a clear platform vision that enables Stake to scale reliably, securely and efficiently as the business grows

• Engineering teams can independently build, deploy and operate services through intuitive self-service tooling and platform capabilities

• You’ve influenced architectural decisions across multiple domains, improving consistency, resilience and operational excellence across the organisation

• Reliability, observability and security are embedded into the way engineering teams build and operate software

• Platform investments have materially improved engineering productivity, delivery speed and system performance

• You’ve identified and solved critical scaling challenges before they became constraints to growth

• Senior engineers and teams regularly seek your guidance on complex technical decisions, architecture and platform strategy

• You’ve helped develop the next generation of technical leaders through mentorship, coaching and technical leadership

You’ll thrive here if you…

• Have deep experience designing and operating cloud-native platforms at scale, with strong expertise in Kubernetes and modern infrastructure practices

• Have strong knowledge of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ecosystem, with hands-on experience designing and building cloud solutions

• Think beyond individual systems and naturally connect technical decisions to customer outcomes, business goals and organisational impact

• Enjoy solving complex problems that span teams, domains and technical boundaries

• Build alignment through strong communication, technical credibility and sound judgement rather than relying on authority

• Have a track record of leading large-scale initiatives from idea through to measurable outcomes

• Have strong people leadership skills and experience building high-performing teams

• Care deeply about simplicity, reliability and creating leverage for other engineers

Bonus points if you’ve…

• Built or evolved a Platform Engineering function within a high-growth technology company

• Led major cloud migrations or platform modernisation initiatives

• Implemented service mesh, platform security or large-scale observability programs

• Worked in regulated industries such as financial services, payments or fintech

• Developed internal developer platforms that significantly improved engineering velocity