Staff Core Platform Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Germany, +2 more states.

📋 Description

• Shape and enhance the core platform architecture that drives n8n.

• Develop scalable and configurable foundations for execution, infrastructure, and frontend platforms, applicable to both cloud and self-hosted deployments.

• Lead architectural initiatives across the two Core Platform teams.

• Design flexible backend foundations suited for diverse workloads, deployment models, and future scalability.

• Collaborate with frontend platform teams on canvas architecture, real-time communication, performance optimization, plugin contracts, and platform primitives.

• Advance robust workflow execution, orchestration, queues, task distribution, worker management, scheduling, and horizontal scaling.

• Design for accuracy and resilience in distributed environments, addressing failure modes, idempotency, state transitions, tenant isolation, and reliability guarantees.

• Shape the architecture for data and persistence, covering database scaling, sharding, migrations, deployment abstractions, and operational maintainability.

• Guide technical decisions through proposals and RFCs.

• Establish stable platform interfaces and abstractions.

• Mentor engineers through design reviews, pairing sessions, and providing technical guidance.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven record of staff-level architectural ownership across multiple systems or teams.

• Experience in leading migrations, re-architectures, or foundational platform initiatives.

• Profound systems thinking regarding invariants, correctness, failure modes, boundaries, and trade-offs.

• Background in designing configurable, adaptable systems at scale.

• Experience with distributed systems, including asynchronous processing, idempotency, state machines, queues, consistency, and resilience.

• Expertise in data architecture related to persistence, performance, isolation, migrations, and operational reliability.

• Strong proficiency in TypeScript.

• Significant backend systems experience with Node.js that extends beyond traditional CRUD applications.

• Demonstrated cross-team technical leadership through RFCs, design reviews, mentorship, and sound technical judgment.

• Experience in defining platform contracts, abstractions, and enhancing developer experiences.

• Familiarity with modularization, migrations, refactoring, and the evolution of existing systems.

• Nice-to-have: experience with workflow, orchestration, devtools, or infrastructure-heavy SaaS.

• Nice-to-have: knowledge of frontend platform architecture, durable execution patterns, multi-tenant architecture, open-source contributions, large-scale SaaS, monolith-to-modular migrations, cloud and self-hosted deployments, observability, or a solid computer science foundation.

• Proficient in English, the company's primary language.

• For applicants outside of Germany, existing right to work is necessary; visa sponsorship is available for Germany.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equity ownership in n8n.

• In Europe: 30 days of vacation, in addition to public holidays, regardless of location.

• In Europe: benefits aligned with local country standards.

• In Europe: pension contributions according to local country norms.

• €1K (or equivalent) annually for courses, books, events, or coaching.

• Regular hackathons.

• Remote-first work environment across Europe.

• Regular off-site events for team bonding.

• $100 per month to support open-source projects.

• Unlimited budget for AI initiatives.

• Competitive compensation.