---
title: 'Sr. Platform Engineer (Data Platform) at Istari Digital'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-platform-engineer-data-platform-istari-digital-united-states-sa2f3jq9s3bg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-19'
---

# Sr. Platform Engineer (Data Platform) at Istari Digital

- **Company:** Istari Digital
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $145k–$190k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-07-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-19
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/istaridigital.ai/e989a883-f82d-4c8a-84f9-ceb04ca5e038

## Job description

We are seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join our Data Platform team. This role focuses on the services that power user controls, identity, security, secure content sharing, resource management and data access across our platform — including both building on top of Dgraph and contributing to Dgraph internals. The ideal candidate is comfortable working across the stack, but spends most of their time deep in backend services, with strong coding ability in Go and Python.

Core Responsibilities

- Design, build, and maintain services governing user controls, identity, and security across the data platform.

- Build and harden secure content sharing capabilities, ensuring data is accessible to the right users under the right conditions.

- Contribute to internal reporting and analytics tooling that surfaces platform data to internal and external users.

- Work on Dgraph internals as needed, alongside building services and applications on top of Dgraph.

- Partner with platform, integrations, and infra teams to ensure identity and security primitives are consistent across the broader ecosystem.

- Drive decisions on data access patterns, permissions models, and secure sharing architecture.

- Write high-quality, well-tested code in Go and Python, with an eye toward reliability, security, and performance.

- Participate in design reviews and contribute to technical direction for the data platform.

Required Qualifications

- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time in backend/platform engineering.

- Strong proficiency in Go and Python.

- Experience building systems related to identity, access control, permissions, or security — you understand the tradeoffs involved in building secure, scalable systems.

- Comfortable working across the stack, with a preference and strength for backend/services work.

- Experience with graph databases (Dgraph or similar) is a strong plus; interest in working on database internals is a plus.

- Strong understanding of system reliability, security, and performance optimization.

- Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally with platform and infra teams.

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.

- Must be a US citizen or permanent resident living within the United States.

We've built a team of what we call Wizards -- people who bring depth in their domain and range across others, who are collaborative without being deferential, and who genuinely care about what we're building. We celebrate individual contributions, give feedback early and often, and argue about ideas so we can execute together. There's no room here for hierarchy for its own sake, or for busywork that doesn't move the mission. We are outcomes-driven, and we hold each other to a high standard — with genuine respect for each person's expertise and wellbeing. Focus is rewarded.  Finish is remembered. Facts are friendly.  Even when they are not fun. Fellowship is fundamental.  Make others successful.

## About Istari Digital

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Istari Digital provides a digital engineering infrastructure platform that connects and validates engineering data across fragmented environments for mission-critical industries like aerospace, defense, and energy.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A‑II; venture-backed)
- **Headquarters**: Arlington, Virginia, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Dr. Will Roper (CEO) and Christopher Benson (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Aerospace, defense, space, energy, transportation, critical infrastructure
- **Target customers**: Enterprise and government organizations in “no‑fail” sectors (e.g., Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin)
- **Mission**: “Level the digital playing field in no‑fail industries” – enabling secure, auditable, and AI‑native engineering workflows without centralizing sensitive data

## Products & Services
- **[Istari Digital Platform](https://www.istaridigital.com/product)**: A digital infrastructure that securely routes engineering data across tools, teams, and classification boundaries. It connects models, simulations, and workflows to enable real‑time collaboration, system validation, and compliance certification – all while keeping data under the owner’s control. (Type: SaaS / Platform)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding – $55.05M (per CBInsights) or $40.1M (per LinkedIn); conflicting reports may reflect different round definitions
- **Notable Investors**: Icon Ventures, Teamworthy Ventures, Eric Schmidt, AeroX Ventures, Radius Capital
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount of 64 employees (+61.5% year‑over-year)
  - LinkedIn followers grew 48.1% in the past year
  - Acquired Istari Federal LLC and Dgraph (2025)
  - Customers include Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin
  - 27 patents filed (as of early 2025)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Built for no‑fail industries**: The platform is designed for environments where failure is not an option (fighter jets, satellites, critical infrastructure), giving it a deep credibility moat.
- **Secure collaboration without compromise**: Enables cross‑organization, cross‑classification collaboration while allowing each party to retain control of their own data – a key differentiator in defense and regulated sectors.
- **Agentic engineering & AI‑native workflows**: Integrates AI into engineering validation and certification, reducing cycles from months to minutes.
- **Founders with domain expertise**: CEO Will Roper was the former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; CTO Christopher Benson brings deep technical experience from hyperscalers and defense programs.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the platform to serve more mission‑critical industries (air, sea, space, energy, transportation)
- Deepening AI capabilities for automated validation, compliance, and certification
- Expanding through acquisitions (Istari Federal, Dgraph) to strengthen federal presence and graph‑based data capabilities
- Building a distributed workforce with offices in Arlington (HQ), Cambridge (MA), and remote roles across the US

## Why Work Here
- **Mission‑driven culture**: Employees work on genuinely hard, unsolved problems in decentralized data sovereignty, AI engineering, and cross‑domain security – with direct impact on national security and critical infrastructure.
- **Remote‑friendly**: Many roles are listed as remote (anywhere US) or hybrid (DMV area); on‑site options exist in Huntsville, AL and Seattle, WA.
- **Diverse team background**: The team comes from defense, industry, academia, government, and startups – “everyone’s background is a feature, not a footnote.”
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapid headcount growth, recent acquisitions, and strong investor backing suggest a high‑growth environment with ample career development opportunities.
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on deep curiosity, craft, and solving problems that matter; the platform is built by people who have lived the pain of manual, siloed engineering workflows.

## Sources
1. [Istari Digital – Company & Product Overview](https://www.istaridigital.com/)
2. [Istari Digital – About (Founders, Mission, Culture)](https://www.istaridigital.com/about)
3. [Istari Digital – Product Page](https://www.istaridigital.com/product)
4. [Istari Digital – Careers (Lever)](https://jobs.lever.co/istaridigital.ai/)
5. [CBInsights – Company Profile & Financials](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/istari-1)
6. [LinkedIn – Istari Digital Company Page](https://linkedin.com/company/istaridigital)

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