Lead Infrastructure Backend Engineer

📍 San Francisco, CA – Hybrid / Onsite Preferred (3 days a week)🕒 Full-time

About the Role

We’re looking for a hands-on Lead Infrastructure Backend Engineer to shape and scale the foundation of our AI-driven enterprise platform. You’ll be the technical backbone of our infrastructure efforts — working across backend systems, Kubernetes-based deployments, CI/CD pipelines, and secure customer rollout processes including on-prem environments.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives at the intersection of infrastructure, backend development, systems design, and DevOps — and wants to make a real impact in a fast-moving, high-ownership startup environment.

What You’ll Do

• Own and evolve our platform’s core infrastructure, spanning stateful systems (Postgres, Redis, object storage) and stateless microservices (APIs, async workers)

• Design and operate Kubernetes infrastructure, including Helm-based deployments, autoscaling, resource tuning, and service mesh integrations

• Implement Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Pulumi, or similar tools to ensure reproducible, secure, and scalable infrastructure provisioning

• Build CI/CD pipelines that support safe, observable, and automated releases — integrating static/dynamic code analysis (SAST, DAST) and security gates

• Set up and maintain observability tooling, including metrics, logs, and traces (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, FluentBit)

• Support on-prem and hybrid deployments with enterprise customers — working directly with customer teams to package and operationalize our platform securely

• Integrate and operate queuing and caching systems, such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, and Redis, to support high-throughput systems

• Collaborate across teams to define platform interfaces, review designs, mentor teammates, and deliver technical clarity on complex problems

What We’re Looking For

• 6+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure engineering roles

• Strong programming skills in Go, Python, or Rust

• Expertise with Kubernetes, Helm, and containerized architecture at scale

• Deep understanding of running stateful systems (PostgreSQL, Redis, object storage) alongside stateless microservices

• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling like GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, CircleCI, and secure build practices

• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform or Pulumi

• Experience deploying and managing queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ) and caches (Redis, Memcached)

• Comfort working directly with enterprise customers and navigating on-prem/air-gapped deployment environments

• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills

Bonus Experience

• Operating in air-gapped or restricted networks using secure Kubernetes configurations

• Deep understanding of networking, TLS termination, DNS, service meshes

• Contributions to open-source infrastructure tooling

• Familiarity with Zero Trust principles, OAuth2/RBAC, and compliance-grade infrastructure (SOC2, ISO27001)

Why Join Us?

This is a foundational role where you'll help define our platform’s technical DNA. Expect autonomy, deep technical impact, and the chance to work alongside a highly experienced, mission-driven team solving real problems for enterprise AI adoption.

Our Commitment to You

At Across AI, we’re committed to supporting our team with comprehensive rewards and benefits designed to meet diverse needs across roles and locations. Our core offerings include:

• Flexible Time Off – Take the time you need to recharge.

• Health and Dental Insurance – Where applicable, to cover you and your loved ones.

• Compensation and Benefits – Competitive compensation includes salary and stock options.