San Jose, CA
Platform engineers who build the infrastructure AI runs on. Crosscheck recruits AI Infrastructure & Platform Engineering candidates for contract, contract-to-hire, and permanent roles tied to San Jose.
What We Place
Representative roles
Platforms and technologies
Our Approach
This editorial hiring guide starts with sourced San Jose business context. San Jose's current economic-development work separates artificial intelligence, semiconductor and advanced manufacturing, and large energy-use infrastructure. These settings require different technical evidence for software products, physical production, and high-availability facilities. A Platform Engineer brief should identify the internal users, supported workloads, infrastructure boundary, and service promise. Kubernetes or infrastructure-as-code keywords do not show whether a candidate can reduce delivery friction while preserving reliability and security.
Source platform engineers with experience at AI-native and cloud-first companies
Vet on IDP design, Kubernetes, GitOps, and developer experience tooling
Deliver shortlists within the agreed search timeline, candidates ready to interview
Permanent placements include a 90-day replacement guarantee, subject to the signed agreement.
Start the search
Include the business context, systems, delivery phase, work model, compensation, and interview timeline. A Crosscheck search lead will use that context to calibrate the role before sourcing begins.
Local Market Brief
List the paved paths the platform must provide, such as service templates, environments, secrets, observability, or deployment controls. Set adoption, uptime, support, and change-ownership expectations for the team that will use them. The three sourced San Jose contexts below turn that scope into intake and screening decisions. They do not measure current vacancies, candidate supply, or Crosscheck client activity.
Editorial market scenario
Set the system boundary, decision rights, work model, and interview schedule before sourcing. Candidates can then compare the role on concrete responsibilities. This is planning guidance, not measured local demand.
Editorial industry scenario
A cross-industry brief should start with the systems, users, risks, and outcomes behind the job title. Confirm that this context applies to the employer before using it in the search.
Screening focus
Candidates are assessed on automation, observability, security, incident response, and the operating scale they have supported.
Published labor benchmark
BLS does not publish an occupation matching Platform Engineer. Crosscheck uses Software Developers (15-1252) as the closest published broad benchmark; it is not a count or pay estimate for this exact specialty.
BLS OEWS May 2025, published May 15, 2026
Published metro employment
87,350
BLS publishes a large metro employment estimate for the proxy occupation, but the figure covers many employers, seniority levels, and specializations outside Platform Engineer work. The estimate equals 76.962 jobs per one thousand across the metro workforce.
Employment concentration
7.09 location quotient
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA reports more than twice the national employment concentration for this proxy occupation. Treat that as occupational context, not proof of available candidates.
Annual wage reference
$138,420 to $289,150
The metro median is 57% above the national Software Developers median. Test whether the role's scope and location requirement support that difference. BLS reports a $213,110 median for the proxy occupation in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA.
Hiring brief scenarios
These scenarios connect location context to role responsibilities. Use them as prompts to verify with the employer, not as measures of San Jose demand, clients, or candidate supply.
Sourced artificial intelligence and software context
The City of San Jose identifies artificial intelligence as a priority growth sector and includes AI training and job-matching programs in its fiscal year 2025 to 2026 economic plan. Map the local operating context to platform isolation and access. Ask how the engineer would separate teams, data classes, and environments while keeping common services supportable. AI product work can join source data, models, application code, evaluation, user feedback, cost controls, access rules, and production support under separate owners.
Evidence to request: Review a platform architecture with tenancy, identity, network, secret, and observability decisions tied to user needs. Define the user decision, model boundary, source data, evaluation set, deployment path, access control, cost target, failure response, and approving product owner.
Sourced semiconductors and advanced manufacturing context
A July 2025 City of San Jose economic-development release names advanced manufacturing and semiconductors among the industries the city plans to attract, retain, and grow. Define the developer workflow that needs improvement. Candidates should show how they measured build, deploy, provisioning, or incident steps before choosing a platform change. Semiconductor and manufacturing programs may connect product definitions, equipment, process recipes, production schedules, quality results, suppliers, inventory, maintenance, and cost records.
Evidence to request: Ask for a before-and-after developer workflow with measured steps, adoption evidence, and support cost. Set the design or plant boundary, product revision, process control, equipment interface, traceability unit, quality release, supplier handoff, change window, and support owner.
Sourced data centers and energy infrastructure context
San Jose's July 2026 large energy-use project page distinguishes data centers from research laboratories, advanced manufacturing sites, electric-vehicle charging hubs, and other power-intensive facilities. State the reliability boundary between the platform team and application teams. Include upgrades, capacity, backups, incident routing, and deprecation in the role scope. These facilities can combine power, cooling, networks, physical security, capacity, asset maintenance, environmental controls, backup systems, and tenant or workload commitments.
Evidence to request: Use an upgrade or outage scenario and require a maintenance plan, communication path, rollback, and ownership matrix. Name the facility and workload boundary, capacity unit, power and cooling dependencies, availability target, access model, maintenance path, recovery test, and change authority.
Interview scorecard
Ask each candidate the same core questions. Score the evidence, ownership, and judgment in the answer instead of relying on job-title or keyword matches.
1. Platform Engineer: Kubernetes
Choose a Kubernetes decision from your work as Platform Engineer. Which constraint changed the design, and what evidence supported the result?
Use the answer to assess the platform boundary, deployment process, service measures, security controls, and incident ownership. The cross-industry technical work context is an editorial scenario, not a measured claim about San Jose.
2. Senior Platform Engineer: Helm
Describe project work you completed as Senior Platform Engineer involving Helm that did not follow the original plan. What did you own, and how did you correct it?
Use the answer to assess the platform boundary, deployment process, service measures, security controls, and incident ownership. The cross-industry technical work context is an editorial scenario, not a measured claim about San Jose.
3. Staff Platform Engineer: ArgoCD
For an ArgoCD system you supported, explain the handoff, operating limits, and measures used after launch. Where did your responsibility begin and end?
Use the answer to assess the platform boundary, deployment process, service measures, security controls, and incident ownership. The cross-industry technical work context is an editorial scenario, not a measured claim about San Jose.
Need the full Platform Engineer evaluation guide?
The role guide covers technical scope, interview questions, and evidence checks once, without repeating the same material on every city page.
FAQ
For qualified exclusive searches in our core disciplines, Crosscheck targets a first candidate slate within 48 hours after a completed intake. Contract placements include a 40-billable-hour replacement guarantee, and permanent placements include a 90-day replacement guarantee, subject to the signed agreement.
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