Staff Platform Engineer

DeepL is a global communications platform powered by Language AI. Since 2017, we’ve been on a mission to break down language barriers. Our human-sounding translations and intelligent writing suggestions are designed with enterprise security in mind. Today, they enable over 100,000 businesses to transform communications, reach new markets, and improve productivity. And, empower millions of individuals worldwide to make sense of the world and express their ideas.

Our goal is to become the global leader in Language AI, building products that drive better communication, foster connections, and make a real-life impact. To achieve this, we need talented individuals like you to join our exciting journey. If you're ready to work with a dynamic team and build your career in the fast-moving AI space, DeepL is your next destination.

What sets us apart is our blend of modern technology, competitive benefits, and an open, welcoming work culture that enables our people to thrive. When we share what it's like to work at DeepL, the reactions are overwhelmingly positive. This may be because of our products that have helped countless people worldwide or our shared mission to improve communication for individuals and businesses, bringing cultures closer together. What we know for sure is this: being part of DeepL means joining a team dedicated to innovation and employee well-being. Discover what our teams have to say about life at DeepL on LinkedIn, Instagram and our Blog.

The Platform team is responsible for providing K8s clusters, storage, load-balancing, and other foundational building blocks for our internal platform. As a Platform Engineer, you will ensure the stability, performance, and security of our platform, on-prem and in the cloud. We currently run well over 10,000 pods across more than 1000 nodes in our Kubernetes clusters, running operations for products used by more than 100 million people worldwide. Our stack is nearly all open-source technology: if we run it, we can fix it.

Your Responsibilities

• Keep the foundations of our platform stable, performant, and secure

• Write software to monitor platform components and automate manual work

• Get a deep understanding of the technologies we work with (e.g. Ceph, karpenter, HAProxy, Cloudflare)

• Troubleshoot reliability or performance anomalies in depth

• Handle incidents and participate in on-call rotations

• Increase platform security

• Seek to make the platform simpler to maintain and more reliable for our teams to use.

• Work closely with other development teams to optimise their usage of the platform and increase the offering to make the DevEx better.

• Support team mates in their professional development through coaching and teaching skills.

What you bring to the table

• Good understanding of compute, storage, and networking

• Hands-on experience with AWS

• In depth experience of containers and scheduling - ideally Kubernetes

• Basic software engineering skills

• Great understanding of Linux and networking

• Passion for digging into OS-level details

• Ability to quickly learn about new technologies

• Product-oriented mindset and eagerness to improve the experience of our developer and customers

You'd get bonus points for

• Experience with running infrastructure in a hybrid on-prem/cloud setup

• Storage systems such as Ceph

• Experience with hardening systems

• Diverse and internationally distributed team: joining our team means becoming part of a large, global community with people of more than 90 nationalities. We're more than just colleagues; we're a group of professionals with a shared mission to connect diverse cultures. Our global presence is growing–we've doubled in size nearly every year, with our employees based in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the US, and Japan, and we continue to expand our network.

• Open communication, regular feedback: as a language-focused company, we value the importance of clear, honest communication. We value smooth collaboration, direct and actionable feedback, and believe that leading with empathy and growth mindset makes us better together.

• Hybrid work, flexible hours: we offer a hybrid work schedule, with team members coming into the office twice a week. This allows you to engage directly with your team and experience the unique energy of our workspace, while still enjoying the flexibility and comfort of working from home. With flexible working hours and trust in your productivity, we are in sync with your team’s general locations and time zones to foster effective and seamless collaboration.

• Regular in-person team events: we bond over vibrant events that are as unique as our team, from local team and business unit gatherings, to new-joiner onboardings, to company-wide events that bring us all together–literally.

• Monthly full-day hacking sessions: every month, we have Hack Fridays, where you can spend your time diving into a project you're passionate about and get the opportunity to work with other teams–we value your initiatives, impact, and creativity.

• 30 days of annual leave: we value your peace of mind. With 30 days off (excluding public holidays) and access to mental health resources, we make sure you're as strong mentally as you are professionally.

• Virtual Shares: An ownership mindset in every role. We believe everyone should share in our success, and that’s why every employee receives Virtual Shares, linking your contribution directly to DeepL’s growth and rewarding you with a stake in our future.

• Competitive benefits: just as our team spans the globe, so does our benefits package. We've crafted it to reflect the diversity of our team and tailored it to align with your unique location, to ensure you feel supported every step of the way.

You are welcome at DeepL for who you are—we appreciate authenticity here. Our product is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all succeed, contribute, and think forward! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our diversity that we will find the power to break down language barriers in the world.