# Senior Staff Software Engineer, Platform
**Company:** [Sentry](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/sentry)
Senior Staff Software Engineer at Sentry leading platform evolution across cloud infrastructure, streaming systems, and core technical foundations. This role requires 12+ years of distributed systems expertise and reports directly to VP of Engineering, focusing on architectural strategy, cross-functional leadership, and establishing engineering excellence standards across the organization.
**Role:** Staff Engineer
**Seniority:** Staff
**Locations:** San Francisco, California
**Salary:** 260000–400000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sentry/af7fab29-5d68-4041-9794-de4de3f41953)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/sentry/senior-staff-software-engineer-platform
---
## Responsibilities

- Platform Architecture Strategy: Architect and translate Sentry's business needs and product strategy into clear, scalable technical blueprints. Design and evolve the cloud infrastructure, streaming systems, storage, deployment mechanisms, and security frameworks that power the entire Sentry platform. Ensure architectural decisions support the company's growth trajectory and enable teams to scale safely.
- Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner directly with product and engineering leadership to align technical roadmaps with company strategic goals. Lead cross-cutting initiatives across the Platform organization end-to-end, working across multiple teams to drive meaningful technical and business outcomes. Report directly to VP of Engineering and influence company-wide technical direction.
- Engineering Excellence & Mentorship: Promote engineering excellence throughout the organization by mentoring platform engineers and senior/staff-level engineers. Share best practices, establish high standards for system design, scalability, and operational quality. Shape the technical culture and long-term health of Sentry's engineering organization.
- Architectural Review & Governance: Review and evaluate major architectural proposals across the company to ensure consistency, maintainability, and long-term technical health. Provide expert guidance on infrastructure technology decisions including Kubernetes, Terraform, service mesh, streaming frameworks, and database architecture. Establish frameworks for evaluating complexity versus simplicity trade-offs.
- Core Platform Development: Own the core services and technical foundations that enable every product and engineering team at Sentry to move fast and build with confidence. Contribute hands-on to production-quality code and proof-of-concept architectures. Maintain deep technical involvement while guiding organizational technical strategy.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Computer Science or Equivalent","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience. While formal education is valuable, extensive professional experience in distributed systems can substitute."}

### technical

- {"name":"Container Orchestration & Infrastructure-as-Code","description":"Expert-level proficiency with Kubernetes for container orchestration and Terraform for infrastructure-as-code. Should understand advanced Kubernetes concepts including networking, storage, scheduling, and operational patterns at production scale."}
- {"name":"Service Mesh Architecture","description":"Deep knowledge of service mesh technologies and patterns. Should understand microservices communication, observability, traffic management, and security patterns in distributed systems."}
- {"name":"Real-Time Streaming & Event Processing","description":"Expert knowledge of Kafka and real-time streaming frameworks such as Apache Flink or Apache Beam. Should understand event-driven architectures, stream processing patterns, fault tolerance, and stateful computation at scale."}
- {"name":"Database Architecture & Storage","description":"Deep expertise in OLAP and OLTP database systems, including their architectural tradeoffs, optimization strategies, and use cases. Proficiency with blob storage systems, caching layers (Redis, Memcached), and data consistency patterns."}
- {"name":"Production-Quality Code Development","description":"Ability to write high-quality, maintainable code and create production-ready proof-of-concept architectures. Should demonstrate strong software engineering fundamentals and the ability to validate architectural concepts through implementation."}
- {"name":"Technical Communication","description":"Excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholder groups including executives, product managers, and engineers. Should be comfortable presenting to senior leadership and making technical concepts accessible."}

### experience

- {"name":"Large-Scale Distributed Systems","description":"12+ years of professional experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems. Should demonstrate expertise in handling complex multi-dimensional technical challenges across infrastructure, product, and organizational layers at scale."}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure Leadership","description":"5+ years of hands-on experience working in cloud-based environments such as AWS or GCP. Should have proven success architecting, deploying, and optimizing cloud-native infrastructure and services."}
- {"name":"Technical Architecture Leadership","description":"3+ years in a technical architecture, principal engineer, or equivalent senior leadership role. Should demonstrate experience making high-impact architectural decisions and leading technical strategy at an organizational level."}
- {"name":"Cross-Team Project Leadership","description":"Proven track record of leading large-scale, cross-team engineering projects with measurable impact. Should show ability to drive complex initiatives from conception through successful delivery while coordinating multiple stakeholders."}
- {"name":"Senior Engineer Mentorship","description":"Demonstrated experience mentoring and developing senior-level and staff-level engineers. Should exhibit strong capability in knowledge transfer, technical guidance, and helping others grow their architectural and leadership skills."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Distributed Systems Design","description":"Expert-level understanding of distributed systems principles, patterns, and tradeoffs. Should be proficient in designing for scalability, reliability, fault tolerance, and consistency in complex distributed environments."}
- {"name":"Cloud Architecture","description":"Deep proficiency architecting and optimizing cloud-native systems on AWS, GCP, or similar platforms. Should understand cloud services ecosystem, cost optimization, multi-region deployment, and cloud-native patterns."}
- {"name":"Kubernetes Administration","description":"Advanced Kubernetes expertise including cluster design, workload management, networking, storage orchestration, and production operational patterns. Should be comfortable with complex Kubernetes deployments."}
- {"name":"Infrastructure as Code","description":"Proficiency with Terraform and other infrastructure-as-code tools. Should understand declarative infrastructure management, state management, and automation patterns for reliable, reproducible deployments."}
- {"name":"Event-Driven Architecture","description":"Expert knowledge of Kafka and real-time streaming frameworks. Should understand topics, partitioning, consumer groups, exactly-once semantics, and stream processing topologies."}
- {"name":"Database Systems","description":"Deep knowledge of OLAP and OLTP systems, including PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, or similar databases. Understanding of indexing strategies, query optimization, replication, and consistency models."}
- {"name":"System Design & Architecture","description":"Strong ability to design scalable systems end-to-end, considering reliability, performance, cost, and operational complexity. Experience designing platform systems that support multiple downstream teams and use cases."}
- {"name":"Leadership & Mentorship","description":"Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers, establish technical standards, and drive organizational technical culture. Should be comfortable influencing without direct authority."}

### preferred

- {"name":"Observability & Monitoring Systems","description":"Experience building or working extensively with observability platforms, distributed tracing, metrics systems, and logging infrastructure. Deep understanding of observability patterns and their importance in distributed systems."}
- {"name":"Go or Rust Programming","description":"Proficiency in Go, Rust, or other systems programming languages. Experience building performant, concurrent systems and understanding memory management and performance optimization."}
- {"name":"Edge Computing & CDN","description":"Experience with edge computing architectures, content delivery networks, or globally distributed systems. Understanding of geographic distribution, latency optimization, and edge-based processing."}
- {"name":"Security Architecture","description":"Demonstrated experience designing secure systems, implementing security best practices in distributed architectures, and understanding threat models at scale. Background in cryptography or security engineering is valuable."}
- {"name":"Open Source Contribution","description":"Active participation in open-source projects, particularly infrastructure or systems projects. Experience contributing to Kubernetes, Terraform, Kafka, or similar foundational technologies is highly valued."}
- {"name":"Developer Tools & Platforms","description":"Experience building platform or infrastructure products that directly support developer productivity. Understanding of developer experience, API design, and platform tooling."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Terraform","description":"Infrastructure-as-code tool for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure declaratively. Essential for reproducible, version-controlled infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization platform enabling consistent deployment of applications across environments. Foundation for modern microservices architectures."}
- {"name":"Prometheus","description":"Monitoring and alerting system for time-series metrics collection. Industry standard for infrastructure and application monitoring."}
- {"name":"Grafana","description":"Visualization platform for metrics, logs, and traces. Essential tool for observability and dashboarding in distributed systems."}
- {"name":"GitOps Tools","description":"Tools like ArgoCD for managing infrastructure and application deployments through Git-based declarative configuration."}

### others

- {"name":"Service Mesh","description":"Architectural pattern and infrastructure for managing service-to-service communication. Understanding of Istio, Linkerd, or similar implementations."}
- {"name":"Cloud Platforms (AWS/GCP)","description":"Deep expertise in major cloud providers' services including compute, networking, storage, and managed services. Essential for modern platform engineering."}
- {"name":"Observability & Distributed Tracing","description":"Systems and practices for understanding distributed system behavior through metrics, logs, and traces. Understanding of Jaeger, Zipkin, or similar tools."}
- {"name":"High-Availability & Disaster Recovery","description":"Patterns and practices for building resilient systems including multi-region deployment, failover strategies, and business continuity planning."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Robust OLTP database system for transactional workloads. Industry standard for reliable, scalable relational data storage."}
- {"name":"ClickHouse","description":"OLAP database optimized for analytical queries and time-series data. Excellent for metrics, events, and observability data at scale."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory caching and data structure store. Used for performance optimization, session storage, and real-time analytics."}
- {"name":"Cassandra","description":"Distributed NoSQL database for handling massive scale and high availability requirements. Commonly used for time-series and event data."}

### languages

- {"name":"Go","description":"Systems programming language used for building performant, concurrent infrastructure and platform services. Ideal for cloud-native and distributed systems development."}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Used for infrastructure automation, scripting, and data processing pipelines. Common in DevOps and platform engineering for operational tooling."}
- {"name":"Rust","description":"Systems programming language gaining adoption for high-performance, memory-safe infrastructure components and streaming systems."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for managing containerized workloads at scale. Core to modern cloud-native infrastructure and deployment patterns."}
- {"name":"Apache Kafka","description":"Distributed streaming platform for building real-time data pipelines and event-driven architectures. Critical for handling high-throughput event processing."}
- {"name":"Apache Flink","description":"Stream processing framework for real-time data processing and complex event processing. Used for stateful stream computation and event enrichment."}
- {"name":"Apache Beam","description":"Unified model for batch and streaming data processing. Provides abstraction for writing portable data processing pipelines."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Equity Grants","description":"Meaningful equity participation in Sentry, allowing you to benefit from the company's growth and success as a key technical leader."}
- {"name":"Performance Bonus","description":"Up to 20% annual performance-based bonus in addition to base salary, tied to individual and company objectives."}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Insurance","description":"Group health insurance coverage including medical, dental, and vision plans with employer contributions."}
- {"name":"Paid Time Off","description":"Generous paid time off policy supporting work-life balance and employee wellbeing."}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Investment in continuous learning and professional growth through conference attendance, training programs, and educational resources."}
- {"name":"Remote-Friendly Culture","description":"Flexible work arrangements supporting distributed work, with consideration for candidate location and timezone preferences."}
- {"name":"Diverse & Inclusive Environment","description":"Commitment to building a diverse team with an inclusive culture where every teammate can thrive. Equal opportunity employer with accessibility accommodations."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 400000
- **min:** 260000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

- {"name":"Initial Screening Call","description":"Conversation with Sentry's recruiting team to discuss your background, experience with distributed systems, and interest in leading platform architecture. This call focuses on understanding your technical journey and motivations."}
- {"name":"Technical Architecture Discussion","description":"Deep-dive conversation with current engineering leaders about your approach to complex architectural problems. You'll discuss specific examples of systems you've designed, tradeoffs you've made, and how you think about scalability and operational excellence."}
- {"name":"System Design Interview","description":"Technical interview focused on designing a large-scale distributed system relevant to Sentry's platform challenges. You'll be evaluated on your ability to think through architectural tradeoffs, make reasonable assumptions, and justify design decisions."}
- {"name":"Leadership & Culture Fit","description":"Conversation with VP of Engineering and other senior leaders to assess leadership style, mentorship approach, and alignment with Sentry's values and culture. Discussion around how you drive technical excellence and influence across organizations."}
- {"name":"Offer & Negotiation","description":"If selected, Sentry will present a comprehensive offer including base salary (within the $260k-$400k range), performance bonus structure, equity grants, and other benefits. There's typically flexibility for negotiation based on experience and location."}

## Full description
## **About Sentry**

Software runs the world and the pace is faster than ever. Sentry helps developers fix errors and performance issues before users notice, so teams can spend less time firefighting and more time building.

Trusted by 200,000+ organizations, Sentry is today’s application monitoring standard and our team is building its AI-native future.

# **About the Role**

A strong and reliable platform is essential to scaling Sentry for the future. Our Platform organization is responsible for everything that powers Sentry—from cloud infrastructure and streaming systems to storage, deployment, and security. We own the core services and technical foundations that enable every product and engineering team at Sentry to move fast and build with confidence.

We're looking for a passionate and pragmatic **Senior Staff Software Engineer** to help lead this evolution. In this role, you’ll report directly to the **VP of Engineering** and collaborate with teams across the company to shape the future of Sentry’s platform.

# **What You’ll Do**

* Architect the future of Sentry by translating business needs and product strategy into clear, scalable technical blueprints.
* Partner with product and engineering leaders to align technical roadmaps with company goals.
* Lead cross-cutting initiatives across the Platform org—owning them end-to-end and driving meaningful outcomes.
* Promote engineering excellence by mentoring platform engineers, sharing best practices, and setting high standards for system design, scalability, and operational quality.
* Review major architectural proposals and help ensure consistency, maintainability, and long-term technical health across the company.

# **You’ll Love This Job If You...**

* Enjoy designing and building platforms that help teams move faster and scale safely.
* Thrive on solving complex, multi-dimensional problems across product, infrastructure, and organizational layers.
* Want to make architectural decisions that shape Sentry’s long-term success.
* Bring new ideas, tools, and frameworks to the table—and know when to optimize for simplicity over novelty.
* Enjoy working closely with senior leadership and cross-functional partners to drive company-wide initiatives.

# **Qualifications**

* 12+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems.
* 5+ years working in cloud-based environments (AWS, GCP, etc.).
* 3+ years in a technical architecture or equivalent leadership role.
* Proven track record of leading cross-team, high-impact engineering projects.
* Ability to create production-quality proof-of-concept architectures and write high-quality code.
* Deep knowledge of modern infrastructure technologies, including:

  * Kubernetes, Terraform, Service Mesh
  * Kafka and real-time streaming frameworks (e.g., Flink, Beam)
  * OLAP/OLTP databases, blob storage, caching
* Excellent communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts to a range of stakeholders.
* Experience mentoring senior/staff-level engineers.

The base salary range that Sentry reasonably expects to pay for this position is $260,000 to $400,000 plus up to 20% bonus. A successful candidate’s actual base salary (or hourly wage) amount will be determined by a variety of relevant factors including, without limitation, the candidate’s work location, education, work and other relevant experience, skills, and job-related knowledge. A successful candidate will be eligible to participate in Sentry’s employee benefit plans/programs applicable to the candidate’s position (including incentive compensation, equity grants, paid time off, and group health insurance coverage). See [Sentry Benefits](https://sentry.io/careers/) for more details about the Company’s benefit plans/programs.

## **Equal Opportunity at Sentry**

Sentry is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to its employees and candidates for employment regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, or other legally-protected characteristic. This commitment includes the provision of reasonable accommodations to employees and candidates for employment with physical or mental disabilities who require such accommodations in order to (a) perform the essential functions of their jobs, or (b) seek employment with Sentry. We strive to build a diverse team, with an inclusive culture where every teammate can thrive. Sentry is an open-source company because we believe that everyone, everywhere, should have the ability and tools to make great software. Software should be accessible. That starts with making our industry accessible.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [accommodations@sentry.io](mailto:accommodations@sentry.io).

Want to learn more about how Sentry handles applicant data? Get the details in our [Applicant Privacy Policy](https://sentry.io/careers/applicantprivacy/).