About the Role
Join an early-stage, venture-backed AI infrastructure startup building a next-generation, GitOps-native distributed operating system on top of Kubernetes. As a Platform Engineer, you'll work directly alongside the founding team to design and build the core platform that abstracts Kubernetes complexity while preserving its power — enabling teams to go from bare metal to production AI clusters in days, not months.
This is a high-impact, hands-on role at a small (2–10 person) company with meaningful open-source components. You'll shape architecture decisions, establish engineering patterns, and contribute to a product used by GPU-intensive AI inference and training workloads at scale.
What You'll Do
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Build and extend core platform features in Go, including custom Kubernetes operators and controllers.
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Design and implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD to make continuous deployment seamless and automatic.
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Develop infrastructure-as-code patterns using Terraform and Helm to provision and manage clusters.
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Work on distributed storage solutions using Ceph and WEKA for high-performance, scalable cluster storage.
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Create observability and monitoring systems with Prometheus and Grafana to surface cluster health and performance.
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Build and optimize container networking with Cilium for network security and observability.
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Design and implement federated Kubernetes architectures for multi-cluster management.
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Build automation tooling that reduces operational overhead for developers running production workloads.
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Contribute to open-source components and establish platform architecture patterns as an early team member.
What We're Looking For
Required:
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Strong foundational engineering talent — we prioritize aptitude and hunger to learn over years of specific experience.
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Proficiency in Go and hands-on Kubernetes experience (operators, CRDs, controllers).
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Experience with distributed storage solutions such as Ceph and/or WEKA.
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Experience with ArgoCD and CI/CD pipeline automation.
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Comfort with Terraform, Helm, and related infrastructure provisioning tools.
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Self-directed, strong communicator, and able to prioritize independently in a fast-moving environment.
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Ability to work on-site in San Francisco, CA.
Nice to Have:
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Familiarity with Ansible or Kubespray.
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Background with service mesh technologies (Istio or Linkerd) or CNI plugins.
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Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and their managed Kubernetes offerings.
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Contributions to Kubernetes ecosystem tools or other open-source infrastructure projects.
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2+ years of software development experience in a platform, SRE, or infrastructure role.
Compensation & Benefits
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Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 USD annually
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Early-stage equity
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Visa sponsorship available
Location
This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be willing and able to work in-person. Visa sponsorship is available for qualified candidates.
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