Job Search Retro: Platform Engineer

Jeff landed a Platform Eng role on an AI team within a large established tech company.

Hedgy Member Background

• Most recently a co-founder at infra/platform focused engineering consulting firm.
• Prior to that was the 12th employee at a startup.
• Received multiple offers from both startups and public tech companies.

Key Insights

Show don’t tell when it comes to your AI competency

• He asked hiring managers if they were comfortable with him using AI tools as part of his interview. This was a nice way for him to see if they were eager to adopt usage of these tools as well as for him to demonstrate his abilities.
• Using Claude Code, he would share his screen and walk through system designs questions.
• One caveat is often there could be 5-10 minutes of setup during the interview required - which could lead to some nervousness on both sides. This is when Claude would be ingesting the documentation and context.
• Jeff was able to build a docusource website and easily produce and update mermaid diagrams. His prompting showed where he was firm on certain assumptions while also giving Claude some latitude on subject matters he was less familiar with.
• If there was ever initial skepticism during the setup, the output resulted in a slam dunk interview.

Job applications aren’t working

• Jeff applied or reached out to 80 companies. None of the 6 companies he chatted with came from a cold application. All were referrals (via Hedgy and friends).
• In two instances a hiring manager actually reached out to him even though he had applied weeks earlier.

Narrow and specific in his outbound positioning

• Instead of positioning himself as a jack of all trades engineer (which he could be). He clearly positioned himself as a Staff level platform engineer building in Go for Kubernetes on AWS or GCP.
• This allowed his friends and former co-workers to both more easily help connect him with opportunities in addition to hiring managers to know he could potentially be a great fit.

This post is part of our job search retro series where Hedgy members who have recently started a new job share learnings from their search. If we can be helpful as you navigate your search, email us at founders@hedgy.works