Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

ABOUT THE ROLE This is an early-team platform engineering role at a seed-stage AI infrastructure startup building an open-source, GitOps-native distributed operating system on top of Kubernetes. You will work closely with the founding team to design and evolve core platform features, making multi-cluster management intuitive for developers running demanding AI workloads. The work spans the full infrastructure stack, from bare metal to production-grade Kubernetes. WHAT YOU'LL DO • Build and extend core platform features in Go, including custom Kubernetes operators and controllers. • Design and implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD to make continuous deployment seamless. • 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 cluster storage. • Create observability and monitoring systems with Prometheus and Grafana to surface cluster health and performance. • 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 that reduces operational overhead for developers running production workloads. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR • 2 to 5+ years of software development experience, with a strong systems or infrastructure focus. • Hands-on proficiency in Go, including writing Go in a Kubernetes environment. • Production Kubernetes experience: managing clusters at meaningful scale, writing operators and controllers, working with CRDs. • Experience with distributed storage solutions such as Ceph or WEKA. • Experience designing federated Kubernetes architectures for multi-cluster management. • Familiarity with GitOps workflows and ArgoCD. • Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform and Helm; Ansible or Kubespray is a plus. • Background with container networking, CNI plugins, or service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd. • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and their managed Kubernetes offerings. • Familiarity with observability tooling such as Prometheus and Grafana. • Experience with GPU infrastructure or bare metal environments is a strong plus. • Contributions to Kubernetes ecosystem tooling or similar open-source infrastructure projects are a bonus. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary range: $180,000 to $210,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is available. LOCATION On-site in San Francisco, California. Candidates must be able to work in person full-time.