Senior Software Engineer (On-Premises Platform)

About Phaidra
Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.
The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.
Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:
We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.
Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.
Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Agency, Velocity, Craft, and Truth. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture
Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.
Who You Are
You are a senior software engineer who has built and operated platform infrastructure inside customer-controlled networks, where the environment cannot be treated like another cloud account. You are comfortable using software and automation to create consistent deployment environments across operating systems, networking, compute, storage, and observability.
You have deep empathy for customers and their IT and operations teams. You can turn site-specific constraints into reusable platform capabilities without pretending that every facility is identical.
**We are seeking teammates who are based in the United States or Canada (Eastern timezone).
About the Role
You will lead the design and implementation of the infrastructure that allows Phaidra’s control software to be deployed and operated reliably inside customer networks.
As Phaidra deploys control agents across more customer environments, we need a consistent approach to customer-site infrastructure, deployment, and operations. Working alongside the RL Control team, you will turn Phaidra’s broader infrastructure direction into systems for installing, configuring, updating, observing, and supporting deployments across varied customer networks.
This is a hands-on senior engineering role. You will make design decisions and lead implementation in this area, working with Infrastructure leadership on broader direction and with the RL Control team on requirements and integration.
What You’ll Work On
You will lead platform design and implementation within a cross-functional effort to bring Phaidra’s products into customer environments. Working alongside RL Control, Infrastructure, and customer delivery teams, you will turn recurring deployment challenges into reusable capabilities. The areas below describe that shared problem space; your work will span them as product and deployment needs evolve.
Customer-Site Infrastructure
Design and build a standardized Phaidra infrastructure footprint inside customer networks that gives product teams a consistent target for deploying control agents and supporting services.
Define the compute, operating-system, networking, storage, identity, configuration, and observability capabilities that every deployment can rely on.
Evaluate when Phaidra should supply or standardize hardware, and integrate that hardware into a repeatable deployment and support model.
Deployment Platform and Interfaces
Build the platform services and interfaces other teams use to package, deploy, configure, monitor, and safely update their software.
Provide resource isolation, health management, restart and recovery behavior, and version compatibility at the platform layer.
Partner with controls and product engineers to define clear contracts between the platform, deployed software, local equipment, and cloud services.
Industrial Connectivity
Build reliable data ingress, command egress, and connection-management capabilities between Phaidra software and customer control systems.
Develop or integrate clients and adapters for programmable logic controllers (PLCs), building management systems (BMS), supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA), and protocols such as OPC UA and Modbus/TCP.
Work with customer IT and operations teams to satisfy site networking, security, access, and performance constraints.
Deployment and Operations
Build repeatable installation, commissioning, configuration, upgrade, rollback, backup, and recovery workflows.
Provide remote management and diagnostics when permitted while ensuring the local platform remains safe and useful through restricted or intermittent connectivity.
Build telemetry, alerting, and support tooling that lets Phaidra understand platform and agent health across deployed sites.
Technical Design and Delivery
Lead system design and implementation for customer-site infrastructure and deployment capabilities.
Work with RL Control to define requirements and interfaces, coordinating with other teams where needed.
Document technical decisions, identify broader infrastructure tradeoffs, and turn recurring needs into reusable platform capabilities.
Key Qualifications
5+ years of professional experience in software engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, or a related area.
Experience building or operating infrastructure in customer-controlled, on-premises, hybrid, or otherwise restricted network environments.
Strong programming skills in a high-level language such as Python, Go, or C# and experience building maintainable automation or platform services.
Working knowledge of Linux, containers, networking, and production debugging.
Experience building repeatable automation for provisioning, configuration, deployment, updates, or operational management.
Ability to turn varied deployment requirements into reusable platform capabilities and supported operational patterns.
Demonstrated ability to lead the design and implementation of ambiguous technical work and collaborate effectively across teams.
Preferred Skills & Experience
Docker and Kubernetes in on-premises, hybrid, or resource-constrained environments.
Familiarity with deploying and supporting physical devices, gateways, or industrial-compute systems in customer networks.
Experience with or working knowledge of real-time operating systems (RTOS) and software that interacts with physical equipment.
OPC UA, Modbus/TCP, BACnet, MQTT, or other industrial and device protocols.
Cross-platform development for Linux and Windows.
Local message brokers, durable queues, and event-driven systems.
Private networking, certificate management, workload identity, and secrets distribution.
Observability for remote systems using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or equivalent tools.
Nice-to-haves
Secure remote access for systems operating in customer environments.
Synchronization between local and cloud services, including operation through limited or interrupted connectivity.
Bare-metal provisioning, secure boot, trusted platform modules (TPMs), or hardware-backed identity.
GPU or other specialized compute in customer environments.
Experience commissioning software that monitors or controls physical equipment.
Familiarity with safety-sensitive control systems.
Our Stack
Languages: Python, Go, C#/.NET, Bash
Customer-site platform: Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes
Industrial connectivity: PLCs, BMS/SCADA systems, OPC UA, Modbus/TCP, related protocols
IaC and configuration: Terraform, Kapitan, Helm/Kustomize
Delivery: GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis
Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry
Environments: Customer networks, on-premises

Work arrangement
Yes