Sr. Platform Engineer, Media Technology

How You’ll Contribute

The Technology Division creates digital experiences for and delivers information technology services to the National Geographic Society (NGS). From our staff to our constituents, Technology provides the power to amplify NGS’s impact through value-based product delivery, transformational data services, and world-class support and infrastructure services. These services include employee training and technical support, audio/visual production, device management, enterprise architecture, network management, on‑premise and cloud computing, information security, identity management, data management and integration, product management, user experience design, software development, systems engineering, and systems administration. Technology comprises five teams: Business Products, Constituent Products, Data Products, Infrastructure & Security, and Technology Support Services. As part of the Media Technology Team, Sr. Platform Engineers enable media activities at NGS, helping the organization produce, preserve, and distribute petabytes of media content while maintaining a world‑class archive of physical and digital media.

Your Impact & Responsibilities

Architecture & Engineering (60%)

• Manage the design, development, maintenance, and support of digital asset management platform components, including automation routines and system integrations.
• Develop software components and automated unit tests.
• Work with DevOps to maintain and extend build and release pipelines.
• Oversee the creation and maintenance of architectural and operational documentation according to departmental standards.
• Collaborate with customers and product managers to translate functional and non‑functional requirements into actionable work, focusing on technical feasibility and technology investment choices.
• Work with IT infrastructure and operations teams to ensure systems are configured and managed with appropriate levels of processing, storage, network capacity, data protection, and security compliance.

Operations & Technical Support (20%)

• Oversight of the technical administration duties required to maintain the digital asset management system and Special Collections systems, including software upgrades and patch management.
• Define service levels for platform components and ensure appropriate observability in media-related systems.
• Investigate, troubleshoot, and perform root‑cause analysis for incidents and problems with systems and automations supporting media activities.
• Produce incident reports and conduct incident post‑mortem reviews.
• Conduct regularly scheduled reliability assessments; define and execute work plans to improve service availability, reliability, and performance.

Management & Innovation (20%)

• Provide technical and architectural direction to on‑ and off‑shore software developers in concert with the NGS architects team.
• Collaborate with delivery managers, product managers, and Technology management to maintain and enhance technology work management processes and best practices, including selecting metrics and setting targets for process improvement.
• Coach and mentor other engineers and participate in technology communities of practice that support continuous improvement.
• Stay current with advancements in information technology, digital asset management, and agile methodologies.

Minimum Years and Type of Experience

A minimum of 7 years of experience working in diverse, data‑rich, digital environments; especially cloud platforms and architectures. Understanding of workflows and complex digital systems.

Educational Background

A bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems (MIS), Computer Science, or a related field is preferred, but not required. Equivalent experience is acceptable.

Knowledge and Skills

• Knowledge of and experience with digital asset management systems, digital archive systems, integrated library systems, and collections management software.
• Knowledge of and experience with digital media operations including ingest and distribution, transcoding, compression, workflow design, rights management, and access control.
• Experience with scripting/automation/orchestration and integration with other enterprise platforms in SaaS/PaaS/IaaS environments using APIs.
• Experience with metadata in various formats; storing, processing, and transforming from various sources and destinations.
• Broad knowledge of server, database, and storage infrastructures both on‑premise and in the cloud, and ability to perform hands‑on database and server administration.
• Familiarity with information security and IT service management concepts and processes.
• Knowledge of and experience with shell scripting and service administration on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
• Experience developing applications, automations and scripts using Python and/or NodeJS.
• Capable of instrumenting and debugging processes, including writing and maintaining automated tests.
• Knowledge of and experience using work management software such as Jira, Monday.com, Wrike, Asana, etc.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, able to explain technical problems to non‑technical audiences.
• Extensive experience with agile software development methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban, including working with remote and hybrid teams.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Experience with Git and distributed source control management concepts including branching, merging, and patching.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience working in a special collections or university environment.
• Experience using IaC tooling and principles for provisioning infrastructure; particularly Terraform.
• Experience with NLE Software and workflows including Adobe Premiere.

Salary and Benefits

Salary range for this position is $130,150.00 – $137,000.00. In addition, the National Geographic Society offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Comprehensive wellness program
• 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 6 months of employment
• Flexible paid time off with up to 22 days of paid annual leave per calendar year (15 days for new hires in their first year, prorated)
• 10 days of sick leave
• 12 paid holidays and a paid winter break between December25 and31
• Paid parental leave, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and fertility benefits
• Learning and development opportunities
• Lifestyle Spending Account
• Pet adoption assistance and insurance
• Pre‑tax transportation benefits with generous employer subsidy
• Employer‑paid life insurance and disability benefit
• National Geographic discounts and perks

This is a remote position. Candidates may work from any U.S. location or abroad, provided they are legally authorized to work in the United States and not eligible for visa sponsorship.