Staff Software Engineer – Core Infrastructure

Compa

Staff Software Engineer leading infrastructure engineering projects in a dynamic AI startup. Driving platform evolution and operational excellence for major enterprise clients like NVIDIA and Stripe.

Posted 5/22/2026full-timeIrvine • California, Colorado • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $200,000 - $225,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSAzureCloudDistributed SystemsGoogle Cloud PlatformGrafanaKubernetesPrometheusPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, build, and maintain core infrastructure across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems
Own and drive the evolution of Compa’s Kubernetes-based platforms that give engineers reliable environments
Work on scaling and automation of infrastructure services and tooling
Raise the bar on reliability and observability (SLIs/SLOs, monitoring, incident response)
Design and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment workflows, and infrastructure automation
Drive major company initiatives like multi-cloud support and customer-managed encryption keys
Lead platform engineering efforts that reduce toil and improve developer velocity
Act as a technical leader and multiplier by setting direction and helping others level up
Partner with leadership on what we build next and why

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of industry experience in a software engineering role working on infrastructure, platforms, or backend systems
Deep, hands-on experience with managed Kubernetes platforms (e.g., EKS, GKE, AKS), including cluster architecture, networking, scaling, and upgrades
Strong coding skills in Python, focused on building infrastructure and backend tooling
Experience designing, building, and operating systems on multi-cloud infrastructure across AWS, GCP, and/or Azure
Experience managing infrastructure across cloud boundaries, including identity, networking, data considerations, traffic routing, and failover strategies
Deep understanding of networking, operating systems, cryptographic protocols and distributed systems fundamentals
A passion for enabling teams to build fast while building safely through well-designed proactive detection mechanisms and tooling
Comfortable in a startup: high ownership, fast pace, and ambiguity.
Preferred: Experience working with monitoring and observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry) to operate systems at scale
Strong understanding of DevOps + SRE practices (CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, incident response)
Working knowledge of security principles (IAM, secrets, encryption, least privilege)
Exposure to MLOps
Experience working at early-stage startups.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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Hard Skills & Tools

KubernetesPythonCI/CDinfrastructure automationmulti-cloud infrastructurenetworkingoperating systemscryptographic protocolsdistributed systemsDevOps

Soft Skills

technical leadershipcollaborationproblem-solvingadaptabilityownershipcommunicationmentorshipinitiativeteam enablementproactive detection