Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Reliability

Job description

Zilliz is a fast-growing startup developing the industry’s leading [vector database](https://zilliz.com/) for enterprise-grade AI. Founded by the engineers behind Milvus, the world’s most popular [open-source vector database](https://milvus.io/), the company builds next-generation database technologies to help organizations quickly create AI applications. On a mission to democratize AI, Zilliz is committed to simplifying data management for AI applications and making vector databases accessible to every organization. We're entering our next phase of 10x growth; more customers, larger datasets, and far higher expectations for reliability. You'll join a small, fast-moving Cloud Platform team that operates large-scale, multi-cloud, distributed database systems in production. This is a high-ownership role for engineers who want to move fast, build automation instead of toil, and take real responsibility for production stability. ### What you will do: - Own the reliability, availability, and production stability of Zilliz Cloud as we scale through the next stage of growth - Debug complex production issues across Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, and distributed database systems - Build automation and diagnostic tooling; log analysis, alert correlation, incident investigation, runbook automation, and remediation workflows so problems get solved once, not repeatedly - Turn recurring incidents into reusable tools, automation, documentation, and product improvements - Improve observability across latency, availability, throughput, and resource efficiency - Partner with database and infrastructure engineers to make Zilliz Cloud more reliable, scalable, and automated ### What we are looking for: - 3+ years building or operating production cloud systems, infrastructure platforms, database systems, or large-scale online services - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience - Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) - Solid understanding of distributed systems; availability, scalability, performance, failure recovery, and operational tradeoffs - Experience with distributed databases, storage systems, search systems, or large-scale online systems is a strong plus - Experience operating highly multi-tenant systems or large infrastructure fleets; thousands of nodes, clusters, tenants, or customer deployments is especially valuable - Familiarity with modern cloud operations tooling such as Terraform, Helm, Argo CD, Prometheus, Grafana, and CI/CD systems - Strong bias for action, and the drive to thrive in a fast-paced, rapidly scaling environment ### How we operate: - **High ownership:** You own production reliability end-to-end. The whole system, not a slice of it. High autonomy, high trust, minimal process. - **Fast and focused:** We ship often and keep a high bar. This team suits engineers who want velocity and a steep growth curve over red tape. - **Globally distributed:** We work closely with our core engineering teams across APAC. Occasional early morning or evening syncs in exchange for an on-call setup designed around timezone coverage, not overnight pages.