Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)
Clera · San Francisco, California, United States · $150K–$200K/yr
Technology, Information and Internet · 2-10 employees
About the role
You will design and evolve the core platform by building custom Kubernetes operators and controllers in Go. Additionally, you will implement GitOps workflows and infrastructure-as-code patterns to manage scalable AI clusters.
What they look for
Requirements
The role requires at least 2 years of software development experience with proficiency in Go and hands-on Kubernetes expertise. Candidates should also have experience with distributed storage solutions and a strong sense of ownership.
Benefits
Full description
About the Role
We're a small, fast-moving AI infrastructure company building an open-source, GitOps-native distributed operating system on top of Kubernetes — purpose-built to handle demanding AI workloads including inference pipelines, distributed training, storage orchestration, and GPU scheduling. Our platform enables companies to go from bare metal to a fully operational, production-grade AI cluster in days.
As a Platform Engineer, you'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with the founding team to design and evolve the core platform: abstracting away Kubernetes complexity without sacrificing its power. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role at a company where your architectural decisions will directly shape the product and the engineering culture. Visa sponsorship is available.
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 and automatic.
- Develop infrastructure-as-code patterns using Terraform and Helm to provision and manage clusters at scale.
- Work on distributed storage solutions using Ceph and WEKA for high-performance, scalable cluster storage.
- Build observability and monitoring systems with Prometheus and Grafana to surface cluster health and performance.
- Optimize container networking with Cilium for network security and deep observability.
- Design and implement federated Kubernetes architectures for multi-cluster management.
- Build automation tooling that reduces 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 (strong foundational talent is prioritized over years of specific experience).
- Proficiency in Go with hands-on experience building developer tools or infrastructure products.
- Solid Kubernetes experience — operators, CRDs, controllers, and/or etcd.
- Experience with distributed storage solutions such as Ceph and/or WEKA.
- Genuine hunger and self-direction; you thrive with autonomy and take ownership of your work.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with ArgoCD and CI/CD pipeline automation workflows.
- Hands-on experience with Terraform, Helm, and related IaC tooling; familiarity with Ansible or Kubespray is a plus.
- Background with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) or CNI plugins.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and their managed Kubernetes offerings.
- Contributions to Kubernetes ecosystem tools or other open-source infrastructure projects.
- Experience with containerization, networking, and cloud-native architectures.
Compensation & Benefits
- Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 USD annually
- Early-stage equity
- Visa sponsorship available
Location
This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. We work in person and believe in the energy and speed that comes from being in the same room as your teammates.
