Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

About this role

ABOUT THE ROLE

Join an early-stage cloud-native startup building a next-generation platform that abstracts Kubernetes complexity while preserving its full power. As a Platform Engineer, you'll work closely with the founding team to design core platform features, GitOps workflows, and the infrastructure layer that makes multi-cluster management intuitive for developers. This is a high-impact, early-team opportunity where your contributions will directly shape the product and architecture.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Build and extend core platform features using Go, including custom Kubernetes operators and controllers.

- Design and implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD to streamline and automate continuous deployment.

- Develop infrastructure-as-code patterns using Terraform and Helm to provision and manage clusters.

- Work on distributed storage solutions using Ceph and WEKA for high-performance, scalable storage.

- Create observability and monitoring systems with Prometheus and Grafana to surface cluster health and performance metrics.

- Build and optimize container networking with Cilium for network security and observability.

- Design and implement federated Kubernetes architectures for multi-cluster management.

- Build automation tooling to reduce operational overhead for developers running production workloads.

- Contribute to open-source components and help establish platform architecture patterns as an early team member.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Required:

- 2+ years of software development experience.

- Proficiency in Go and Kubernetes, with hands-on experience building developer tools or infrastructure products.

- Experience with ArgoCD and CI/CD pipelines and automation workflows.

- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and their managed Kubernetes offerings.

- Experience with containerization, networking, and cloud-native architectures.

- Self-directed, hungry to learn, and comfortable operating with autonomy.

Nice to Have:

- Experience with distributed storage solutions such as Ceph or WEKA.

- Experience with Terraform, Helm, Ansible, or Kubespray for infrastructure provisioning and orchestration.

- Background with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) or CNI plugins.

- Contributions to Kubernetes ecosystem tools or open-source projects.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

- Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 USD annually

- Visa sponsorship available

LOCATION

This is an on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be willing and able to work in person in San Francisco.

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