Lead Engineer – Platform & Infrastructure

Stream powers Chat, Video, Activity Feeds and AI Moderation for billions of end‑users across thousands of apps — from Strava and Bumble to eBay and Patreon. Our platform processes billions of API requests per month and supports applications with millions of concurrent users, while delivering highly reliable, low‑latency services and a great developer experience.

We’re looking for a hands‑on Lead Engineer to own Platform and Infrastructure at Stream. You’ll work directly with a small, senior team and will be responsible for improving the efficiency, reliability, and cost profile of the systems powering Stream’s entire real‑time platform.

This is not an architecture‑at‑a‑distance role. You will write code most of the time, lead infrastructure decisions across teams, and shape how we operate at scale. You’ll report directly to the CTO.

Why This Role Exists

Our platform works — but we’re growing fast and there’s meaningful work ahead on cost optimization, cloud efficiency, and platform scalability. The team needs a strong engineering leader who comes from a software engineering background, can own technical decisions independently, and can make infrastructure move faster without introducing big‑org process dependencies.

What You’ll Work On

Your first 6 months will focus on three areas:

• Cloud cost optimization — identify waste, drive rightsizing, build tooling and guardrails to prevent cost regressions. We want measurable outcomes, not reports.
• Platform reliability and scalability — improve observability, define SLOs where they’re missing, and harden the systems all of Stream’s products depend on.
• Architecture and infra evolution — evaluate and drive decisions on Kubernetes adoption, database architecture, and cloud provider strategy (including potential migration work).

Beyond that, you’ll shape long‑term platform direction, define engineering standards, and collaborate with product and SDK engineers to keep the developer platform fast to build on.

Core Technologies

Go · Python · AWS · GCP · Kubernetes · PostgreSQL · CockroachDB · Redis · Terraform · Prometheus / observability stack

Required

• Software engineering background — you built things, not just configured them. Backend or platform coding experience in Go or Python (not scripting‑only).
• Strong AWS or GCP depth — production ownership, not just certifications. Experience with cloud cost optimization at scale with measurable outcomes.
• Distributed systems and database architecture — real schema decisions, replication trade‑offs, latency budgets. Not just “ran Kubernetes”.
• Hands‑on leadership — you can lead a project and a PR in the same week. Comfortable in a team of 3–5, not dependent on large‑org support structures.
• AI tooling fluency — you use AI tools actively in your engineering workflow. We screen for applied adoption, not familiarity. If you’re not convinced AI is useful, this isn’t the right fit.

Strong Plus

• Kubernetes experience at meaningful production scale
• Cloud migration experience — moving workloads between providers or re‑architecting for cost/performance
• Open source contributions to infra or platform tooling
• Engineering blog or conference talks on cloud, platform, or distributed systems topics
• Prior experience at an API‑first or infrastructure‑enabling scaleup

What we’re not looking for

• Security‑heavy profiles — if compliance frameworks and security assessments are your primary domain, this isn’t the right role.
• Scripting‑only backgrounds — Bash, Ansible, and Terraform are tools, not an engineering foundation.
• Large‑enterprise dependency — if impact required teams of 20+ or committee approval, the scope here will feel very different.
• AI skepticism — we won’t spend time convincing you AI is worth adopting.

Benefits (Netherlands‑based employees):

• Generous compensation
• Company equity
• 28 days PTO + Dutch public holidays
• Pension scheme
• Learning & Development budget
• Commute reimbursement to Amsterdam or company bike
• Fitness stipend
• Access to open‑source project work

Why Stream?

• High scale/ difficult engineering
• Default alive. Startup growth opportunity with healthy revenue
• Strong engineering culture. Engineering is what makes us succeed
• All managers are hands‑on and capable engineers
• Edge network of servers around the world
• Great opportunity to learn and grow
• Raised $58M from leading VCs (Felicis Ventures, Notable Capital, 01.Advisors, Techstars, Arthur Ventures), including backers like Dick Costolo (01 Advisors, ex‑CEO of Twitter), Olivier Pomel (CEO of Datadog), Tom Preston‑W erner (Co‑Founder of GitHub), Nicolas Dessaigne (Co‑Founder of Algolia)

Our culture

Stream has a casual social culture, our team is diverse and we all have different backgrounds. Now, Stream is a team of over 140+ peers from over 37 countries across the globe.

We value transparency, aim for excellence, and support each other on our way to new victories.

Our team consists of the strongest talents worldwide, making Stream a great place to learn and improve your skills.

When it comes to software engineering jobs, our culture is oriented towards ownership and quality: our goal is to deliver reliable, high‑quality software.

Hybrid office policy: applicants based (or relocating to) one of our office locations are expected to work according to the applicable local office attendance policy.

Equal opportunity employer statement: Stream provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Note for external recruiters: We currently have this role covered and do not accept unsolicited agency resumes. We are not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.