---
title: 'Sr. Platform Engineer at Istari Digital'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-platform-engineer-istari-digital-united-states-7tyskv7z306v'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Sr. Platform Engineer at Istari Digital

- **Company:** Istari Digital
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $145k–$190k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-07-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/istaridigital.ai/8a884208-fd14-46e7-89d9-00c6f91eba07

## Job description

We are seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join our Core Platform team. In this role, you will own and evolve the end-to-end architecture of the Core Platform, including backend services, SDKs, AI-enabled capabilities, and supporting infrastructure.

You will design and operate scalable APIs, event-driven systems, distributed services, and AI-integrated workflows, ensuring high standards for reliability, performance, observability, and security. This role requires strong architectural judgment, hands-on technical leadership, and the ability to collaborate cross-functionally to deliver extensible platform capabilities that support both traditional integrations and AI-driven use cases.

You will help set technical direction, mentor engineers, and drive engineering best practices across the team.

Core Responsibilities

- Own the end-to-end architecture of the Core Platform, including backend services, SDKs, AI-enabled components, and related infrastructure.
- Design and implement scalable APIs, event-driven systems, distributed services, and AI-integrated capabilities (including AI/ML and MCP integrations).
- Architect systems that reliably incorporate AI models into production environments, with strong attention to observability, latency, cost management, and failure handling.
- Lead API design and implementation with a focus on usability, performance, and long-term maintainability.
- Architect and evolve microservices using domain-driven design principles.
- Build platform abstractions and primitives that enable AI-driven workflows and agent-based capabilities.
- Partner closely with Product, Infra, and Customer Success teams to deliver seamless, customer-centric integration capabilities.
- Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and architectural guidance to engineers.
- Establish and elevate engineering best practices across design, development, testing, and operations.

Required Qualifications

- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Proven experience building scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems, including systems that integrate AI/ML capabilities.
- Experience integrating AI-powered features into production systems, with an understanding of performance, reliability, and governance considerations.
- Deep expertise in REST API design and implementation.
- Experience designing and operating event-driven architectures.
- Strong coding skills across multiple layers of the stack (backend services, SDKs, developer tooling, and AI-integrated systems).
- Strong understanding of microservices architecture and domain-driven design.
- Strong proficiency in Python (object-oriented and functional programming).
- Experience with Golang and TypeScript desired.
- Track record of technical leadership, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence at both technical and strategic levels.
- Must be a US citizen living within the United States.

## About Istari Digital

Istari is a digital engineering software company building open, scalable infrastructure for engineering data. Our platform lets customers simply and securely integrate engineering models across disciplines, organizations, and security levels — whether they're designing prototypes, performing virtual testing, or training AI and autonomy for complex systems.

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)

## Other roles at Istari Digital

- [Digital Engineering Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/digital-engineering-manager-istari-digital-united-states-6z3jbwajj18z) — United States
- [Sr. Infrastructure Engineer - Deployment Team](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-infrastructure-engineer-deployment-team-istari-digital-united-states-z1jrgc0beb6v) — United States
- [Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer - Deployment Team](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-forward-deployed-engineer-deployment-team-istari-digital-united-states-38qa68a77678) — United States
- [Sr. Product Engineer -- Data Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-product-engineer-data-platform-istari-digital-united-states-vzvxwqj8fm5z) — United States
- [Sr. Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-product-manager-istari-digital-united-states-3n8gmm7ermja) — United States
- [Product Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/product-specialist-istari-digital-united-states-es527fgbry5w) — United States
- [Technical Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-support-engineer-istari-digital-united-states-xga1dwkn9zkz) — United States
- [Sr. Platform Engineer (Integrations Platform)](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-platform-engineer-integrations-platform-istari-digital-united-states-ks352k0dw8qv) — United States
- [Field Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/field-marketing-manager-istari-digital-united-states-xp0v7xngmary) — United States
- [Digital Marketing and Content Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/digital-marketing-and-content-specialist-istari-digital-united-states-vryrpfnjq741) — United States