Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

Job description

### 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.