Bullseye search · Platform Engineer
A great platform engineer makes every other engineer faster. I run a bullseye search for the people who have built internal platforms other teams actually chose to use.
The short answer
Chasen Talent is a founder-led recruiting firm that finds platform engineers for early-stage to growth startups. Founder Chasen Nick runs every search personally as a bullseye search: one specific profile, recruited directly from teams where that work is happening now, and verified before a client ever sees them. In 2026 he has worked 6 platform engineer searches, with base salaries from $175K to $350K.
2026 market read, from my desk
Most requested: Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS and CI/CD. Figures come from real searches on my desk this year. Client names stay confidential.
The target
Shipped internal tooling, golden paths, or deploy systems adopted across teams.
The core of nearly every platform search on my desk.
Treats internal engineers like users, with docs and support to match.
Sets SLOs, owns CI/CD, and makes deploys boring.
Where I find them: Platform and developer-experience teams at scaling startups, infrastructure engineers at cloud-native companies, and engineers who built the first internal platform at a fast-growing team.
How a bullseye search works
We pin down the exact profile together: what they've shipped, the stack, the stage, and the dealbreakers. No keyword lists.
I map who's doing this work right now and recruit them directly with your specific role. Most of them are not applying anywhere.
I check real track record and current role before anyone reaches you, so you meet finalists, not a stack of resumes.
Every step is run by me, Chasen Nick. No handoffs to junior recruiters. How that compares to a big agency →
Questions founders ask
Across the 6 platform engineer searches I've worked in 2026, base salary ran from $175K to $350K, with a typical midpoint around $225K. 6 of the 6 were based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 5 were in-person roles.
DevOps usually describes keeping deployments and infrastructure running. Platform engineering builds a product out of that infrastructure: self-serve tools and paved roads that let every other engineer ship without filing a ticket.
Someone who has built a platform from scratch rather than maintained a mature one, with deep Kubernetes and Terraform experience and the judgment to build only what the team needs right now.
California, New York, and remote across the United States. Most searches on my desk right now are in-person roles in San Francisco.
Other bullseye searches
Tell me about the role. If I'm not the right fit for it, I'll tell you that too.
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