Software Engineer, Vespa Cloud & Enterprise (Java)

Does it sound interesting to work on an open source platform managing the data and real-time search and inference for some of the largest companies in the world? Would you thrive on building the services that let companies deploy, scale and run AI search applications — on a fully managed cloud platform or in their own Kubernetes clusters? If so, we want you to join our team at Vespa.ai as a Software Engineer, Vespa Cloud & Enterprise (Java)!

About Vespa.ai:

Vespa.ai is a team of passionate builders. We maintain and develop the Apache 2.0 licensed open-source AI search platform Vespa.

Vespa is a fully featured search engine and vector database. It supports vector search (ANN), lexical search, and structured data search, all in a single query. Integrated machine-learning model inference enables the application of AI to make sense of data in real time. Together with Vespa's proven scalability and high availability, this empowers to create production-ready search applications at any scale and with any combination of features. Our users and customers are #1 in e-commerce, content, and financial services globally, and are powering companies such as Perplexity, Spotify, Yahoo, Wix, and many more.

In addition to our open-source platform, Vespa.ai develops and runs Vespa Cloud, a robust SaaS offering that allows businesses to harness the power of our technology with ease.

At Vespa.ai, we are extremely focused on automating everything we do to grow fast and maintain high quality. In all roles, we scale through technology, not simply by adding larger teams. We take pride in being small, nimble, and the most productive.

Position overview

Vespa Cloud runs Vespa applications for our commercial customers across AWS, GCP and Azure. Behind it is a set of Java services that provision infrastructure, orchestrate deployments across zones, autoscale clusters, enforce security and access control, and expose the APIs our customers use every day. For customers who need to run Vespa in their own environment, Vespa Enterprise provides the Vespa Kubernetes Operator, which brings the same automated operations to any Kubernetes cluster. Features in both reach paying customers quickly and directly.

We are seeking Java engineers to help develop and improve these services. Depending on your background, you will implement new capabilities in the Vespa Cloud control plane and integrate with cloud provider APIs, or develop and maintain the Vespa Kubernetes Operator — or both. You will work closely with the engineers operating the platform to make it more reliable and self-service. We welcome candidates early in their career as well as experienced engineers; what matters is strong fundamentals and the drive to learn.

At our Trondheim office, we work office-first: you will be based on-site most of the time, with the flexibility to work from home/remotely when needed, as agreed with your manager.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement and maintain Java services in the Vespa Cloud control plane and the Vespa Kubernetes Operator.

• Develop features that customers depend on: deployment orchestration, autoscaling, access management, monitoring, billing and self-service tooling.

• Integrate with cloud provider APIs (AWS, GCP, Azure) and the Kubernetes API.

• Write automated tests and contribute to our continuous integration and delivery pipelines.

• Collaborate with the SRE and core platform engineers on reliability and operability of new features.

• Take part in investigating and resolving customer-reported issues.

Qualifications

• Recent graduates with strong fundamentals are encouraged to apply.

• Strong programming skills in Java. Strong experience in similar languages (Kotlin, C#, Go, etc.) will also be considered.

• Computer Science degree or equivalent practical experience.

• Understanding of REST APIs, networking basics and how services run in the cloud.

• Experience with at least one of: cloud provider APIs (AWS, GCP or Azure), or Kubernetes and operator/controller development. We are hiring for both profiles.

• Good understanding of sound software engineering principles and practices.

• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.

• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.

• Fluent written and spoken English. Norwegian is not required.

Desired Skills

• Experience developing Kubernetes operators or controllers (e.g. Java Operator SDK, Fabric8).

• Familiarity with distributed systems concepts.

• Familiarity with HTTP/2, gRPC or similar service protocols.

• Experience with CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions or Buildkite.

• Interest in security and access-control design.

Some of Our Tools and Services

• Java (current LTS), Maven, JUnit

• AWS, GCP, Azure, and Kubernetes

• GitHub Enterprise Cloud (including GitHub Actions), Buildkite

• Grafana, Jira Cloud, Slack

Why Join Us:

• Opportunities for professional growth and development as part of one of Europe's most exciting start-ups!

• Be part of a cutting-edge team working on innovative search and recommendation technology.

• Work on a team where we don't believe in silos between engineers; there aren't "developers", "ops people", and "sysadmins". We're all engineers solving problems the smart way together!

• Competitive salary and benefits.

• Relocating to Norway? We'll help you settle in, and offer voluntary Norwegian language training.