Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

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.