Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

Clera

$150K — $200K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 2+ years of software development experience focusing on foundational talent over sheer time spent.
  • Proficiency in Go, highlighting experience in building developer tools or infrastructure products.
  • Strong Kubernetes skills including working with operators, CRDs, and controllers.
  • Familiarity with distributed storage solutions such as Ceph or WEKA.
  • Self-driven and motivated, with a genuine capacity for taking ownership of work.

Responsibilities

  • Build and extend core platform features in Go, developing custom Kubernetes operators and controllers.
  • Design and implement GitOps workflows using ArgoCD for streamlined continuous deployment.
  • Create infrastructure-as-code using Terraform and Helm for cluster management at scale.
  • Develop high-performance distributed storage solutions using Ceph and WEKA.
  • Establish monitoring and observability systems with Prometheus and Grafana to ensure cluster health.
  • Optimize container networking security and observability through Cilium.
  • Design federated Kubernetes architectures for effective multi-cluster management.
  • Build supportive automation tools to ease operational overhead for developers.

Benefits

  • Early-stage equity
  • Visa sponsorship available
Full Job 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.

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