[Remote] Backstage SME - Enterprise Platform Engineering
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Blankfactor is seeking a Backstage Subject Matter Expert (SME) to build and operate an enterprise-wide internal developer portal using the Backstage framework. The role involves driving architecture, best practices, platform reliability, and developer adoption while collaborating with various teams to enhance the developer experience.
Responsibilities
- Own the enterprise Backstage roadmap, including platform vision, standards, best practices, and adoption strategy
- Architect and maintain a scalable Backstage deployment (availability, performance, upgrade strategy, plugin lifecycle management)
- Establish and enforce Backstage engineering standards (plugin patterns, API design, code quality, testing strategy, documentation, release cadence)
- Design and implement core IDP capabilities: Software Catalog modeling and governance (ownership, metadata standards, entity schemas, lifecycle, compliance), Scaffolder templates and golden paths (bootstrap services, infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes workloads), TechDocs and documentation workflows (templates, publishing pipelines, quality gates), Search and discoverability, APIs, and developer self-service experiences
- Build and maintain custom Backstage plugins and extend existing plugins to support enterprise needs
- Integrate Backstage with the engineering toolchain (examples: GitHub, Azure DevOps, CI/CD systems, cloud providers, Kubernetes, observability, ticketing, secrets, service ownership)
- Implement enterprise-grade authentication and authorization patterns (SSO/OIDC/SAML, RBAC/ABAC concepts, secure plugin boundaries)
- Ensure secure-by-default practices: dependency management, secret handling, API hardening, supply chain security, and vulnerability remediation
- Define governance processes for onboarding teams, approving templates/plugins, catalog hygiene, and operational support
- Lead and mentor engineers contributing to the portal (code reviews, design reviews, technical direction, best-practice coaching)
- Partner with infrastructure, security, and application teams to drive adoption and remove friction from developer workflows
- Define success metrics (adoption, time-to-onboard, golden path usage, reliability, developer satisfaction) and continuously improve the platform
Skills
- Deep expertise in Backstage architecture and best practices, including hands-on experience building and operating enterprise-scale Backstage platforms
- Demonstrated experience leading a team (technical leadership, mentorship, prioritization, delivery accountability) while remaining hands-on
- Strong proficiency with React (TypeScript) for Backstage frontend customization and plugin development
- Strong understanding of Backstage backend development (Node.js ecosystem) and platform integration patterns
- Working knowledge of cloud and platform engineering fundamentals, including: Azure and AWS (ability to integrate platform services and workloads across cloud environments), Kubernetes (deployments, services/ingress concepts, cluster operations awareness, workload onboarding patterns), Terraform (infrastructure provisioning patterns, modules, environment strategies)
- Strong familiarity with developer platform capabilities: CI/CD enablement, golden paths, self-service workflows, documentation automation, Observability concepts (logs/metrics/traces) and operational readiness (runbooks, on-call considerations)
- Strong communication skills and ability to influence standards across multiple engineering teams
- Prior open-source contributions to Backstage (plugins, core framework, documentation, RFCs) or other CNCF / platform ecosystem projects
- Experience implementing multi-tenant or multi-org Backstage patterns (segmented catalogs, authorization models, plugin governance)
- Experience with Backstage ecosystem tooling such as: Advanced Scaffolder patterns (custom actions, complex workflows, policy/guardrails), TechDocs scaling, doc-as-code enablement, standardization across many repos, Plugin development practices (shared components, design system alignment, versioning strategy)
- Familiarity with GitOps approaches and platform delivery patterns (e.g., Argo CD / Flux concepts)
- Experience integrating Backstage with enterprise systems (ticketing/ITSM, CMDB, identity, secrets managers, cost tooling, security scanning)
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