# Staff Platform Engineer (Databases & Storage)

**Company:** [World Labs](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/world-labs)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Spanner, Postgres, MySQL, Distributed Systems, Data Modeling, Indexing, Replication, Consistency, Transactions, Concurrency, Observability
**Posted:** 2026-04-22

> Owns design, architecture, and operation of database and storage systems for high-throughput, low-latency AI platform workloads. Requires 8+ years experience with transactional databases like Spanner, Postgres; expertise in data modeling, distributed systems, and production reliability.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own the design and evolution of the transactional systems that power the platform
- Define architecture for database and storage systems under high-throughput, low-latency workloads
- Make and drive decisions around data modeling, indexing, replication, and consistency
- Debug and resolve complex production issues, including contention, replication behavior, and performance bottlenecks
- Establish standards for reliability, observability, and operability across the platform
- Partner with product and research teams to support evolving and often ambiguous requirements
- Drive improvements in performance, scalability, and cost across the system
- Mentor engineers and raise the bar for system design and technical decision-making

## Requirements
- **8+ years** of experience building and operating production systems at scale, with ownership of critical infrastructure
- Strong experience designing and operating transactional systems and databases (**Spanner**, **Postgres**, **MySQL**, or similar)
- Deep understanding of data modeling, indexing, transactions, concurrency, and consistency tradeoffs
- Experience owning systems with strict reliability and performance requirements in production
- Strong experience debugging complex production issues and reasoning about failure modes
- Experience designing distributed systems or large-scale infrastructure where tradeoffs are non-trivial
- Proven ability to define architecture and drive technical decisions end-to-end
- Strong judgment in balancing performance, reliability, and cost
- Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with high ownership

## Preferred
- Experience with database internals, storage systems, or query engines
- Experience building infrastructure for AI/ML systems or data platforms
- Experience in early-stage or high-growth environments

## Similar roles

- [Staff Infrastructure Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/bd50f619-96c5-4ab7-b28e-a3646ed6c4a6) - Crusoe - San Francisco, CA - $208k – $253k/yr
- [Staff Infrastructure Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/75f07283-34de-4989-b193-11c3c3676fd2) - Aurelian - Seattle, WA - $200k – $300k/yr
- [Staff Engineer, Deployment Platform](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/93017497-72c8-4479-ae04-8852d7c9f086) - Stripe - Seattle, WA
- [Staff Production Engineer, Compute](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/7a9a870e-9394-42b9-b5f9-423d777df634) - Crusoe - San Francisco, CA - $209k – $253k/yr
- [Member of Technical Staff](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/70236390-de41-405f-8319-26f7b1743953) - Basis - New York, NY - $100k – $300k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/67b87384-e236-44e5-9dac-89ffc7224b37
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/67b87384-e236-44e5-9dac-89ffc7224b37