Platform Engineer

At Horizon Next, we understand the value that different perspectives can bring to our clients and culture, so we strive for an environment where our employees feel welcomed, safe and empowered. We value YOU and believe that your authentic voice and unique perspective allows us to create a more rewarding culture, and experience, together. 

Our simple recipe for success? We hire talented people (thinkers, doers, dreamers, makers), challenge them and give them every opportunity to grow. This position is on the Analytics team. We are a close nit highly efficient and driven team, who enjoy building innovative solutions for our clients and ourselves. Analytics has been a leading source contributing to growth, in the ability to demonstrate value for our clients. 

Job Summary 

The Platform Engineer will play a pivotal role in driving the development and deployment of our Analytics Platform, designed to serve both internal teams and clients. Operating within the fast-paced media agency space, we leverage cutting-edge technology to provide our clients with a competitive edge. This platform empowers clients with real-time, self-service access to analytics while enabling seamless integration of advanced models, solutions, and reporting developed by our Analytics team. The Platform Engineer will collaborate closely with the internal Analytics team to translate business requirements into platform features, ensuring the application is scalable, reliable, and evolves to meet growing demands as it matures 

What You’ll Do  

50% - Develop, implement, and optimize our in-house data platform and visualization tool, Swivel

• Lead the backend development of the Swivel application.  

• Implement new features for the backend 

• Ensure application backend working as intended and bugfix as needed 

• Work closely with Engineering and Project Management team leads to define the Swivel feature roadmap and timelines.

30% - Own and maintain the backend codebase for the Swivel app; making the code clear, performant, and easy for others to contribute to. 

• Own the backend codebase for the app to ensure code correctness 

• Lead the deployment process and schedule to deliver new features to production frequently 

• Ensure that the codebase is structured so that other team members can add features and contribute to the application as-needed. 

15% - Collaborate with Data Scientists and Business Intelligence Analysts to understand data models that will be used in the Swivel tool 

• Work with Analytics team members to understand the requirements for the application 

• Build POCs to showcase functionality and iterate based on feedback 

5% - Participate in Sprint planning and Roadmap development  

• Attend daily Sprint standups 

• Attend bi-weekly Sprint planning sessions 

• Attend Roadmap development sessions as-needed 

Who You Are 

• Perfectionist who are obsessed with attention to the smallest details. 

• You love to learn new technologies and keep expanding your knowledge. 

• You know how to balance the need for flawless execution with the needs to deliver working code to meet client deadlines. 

• A Team player who enjoys working with others to design and implement robust solutions for challenging real-world problems. 

• Critical thinker who thrives when working with a variety of coding and programming languages across multiple systems. 

• Ingenious architect whose understanding of data engineering fundamentals enables them to conceptualize manual processes, generate code, and create systems to reduce human dependency. 

• Automation addict, never do same thing twice. 

Required Skills & Experience: 

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field 

• 5–7 years of hands-on experience in designing, developing, and maintaining robust analytics data platforms, with a focus on data ingestion, transformation, storage, and query performance optimization.

• Proven track record of managing Python-based web applications on Kubernetes.

• Exposure to platform engineering for (preferably) in-house built applications (not commercial platforms) with a strong focus on reporting and data workflows.

• Proven track record of implementing scalable data pipelines, leveraging modern data frameworks, cloud-based data solutions, and big data technologies to enable advanced analytics and business intelligence workflows Proven work experience with backend architecture in Python and API frameworks like FastAPI, Flask, or Django 

• Extensive experience with containerization and microservices architectures, including designing, deploying, and managing containerized applications using Docker.

• Proficient in orchestrating and scaling container workloads with Kubernetes, implementing best practices for resource optimization, service discovery, high availability, and cluster management in production environments. Experience working with backend applications that interact heavily with databases; particularly with Analytical systems like Redshift, BigQuery, or Snowflake 

• Experience optimizing existing systems and code for efficiency to improve application and database performance 

• Nice-to-have: experience with Python’s numerical stack (tools like Pandas and Numpy) 

• Nice-to-have: familiarity with dbt and DuckDB 

• Proven history of taking requirements and building features from scratch 

• Prior experience coming onto an in-progress project with a large existing codebase and diving in to understand the code and building on it futher 

Preferred Skills & Experience 

Application Development 

• Proficiency in building and maintaining scalable, reliable, and secure applications. 

• Experience with modern programming languages (e.g., Python, Javascript). 

• Understanding of microservices architecture and containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes. 

Product Ownership and Strategic Scaling 

• Ability to define, prioritize, and scale the direction of projects to align with business goals. 

• Skilled in collaborating across teams to deliver impactful platform solutions. 

• Experience with agile methodologies and DevOps practices to ensure iterative development and delivery. 

Cloud Infrastructure Expertise 

• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP. 

• Proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools like Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation. 

• Familiarity with serverless architectures and cloud-native technologies. 

Platform Automation & CI/CD 

• Strong expertise in implementing and optimizing CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or ArgoCD). 

• Automating workflows, testing, and deployments for high efficiency and reliability. 

• Scripting experience with Bash, Python, or similar languages for automation tasks. 

Observability and Monitoring 

• Knowledge of observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or New Relic for monitoring system health and performance. 

• Experience implementing centralized logging solutions (e.g., ELK stack, Fluentd, Loki). 

• Troubleshooting complex distributed systems and ensuring high availability 

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving 

• Ability to analyze complex systems, troubleshoot issues, and design optimal solutions. 

• Proactive mindset to identify gaps and drive continuous improvements in platform performance and reliability. 

Collaboration and Communication 

• Proven experience working cross-functionally with development, operations, and leadership teams. 

• Strong written and verbal communication skills to convey technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. 

Tooling and Development Environments 

• Experience building developer tooling to improve developer experience and productivity. 

• Expertise in managing and scaling internal platforms and environments for engineering teams. 

Database and Storage 

• Proficiency with relational (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL databases (e.g., DynamoDB, MongoDB). 

• Understanding of storage solutions, including object storage (S3), EFS, and caching systems (e.g., Redis, Memcached).  

Certificates, Licenses and Registrations  

Software development certificates

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