Lead Engineer – Platform & Infrastructure

The Role

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.

What You'll Work On

• 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).

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.

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