Senior Backend Engineer, Managed Kubernetes & Slurm
Lightning AI2 months ago
Seattle, WA, USA +2 moreSenior
Base Salary
$180k - $250k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate backend services in Go or Python for the managed infrastructure platform.
- Develop control plane services that provision, orchestrate, and manage Kubernetes and Slurm clusters across large-scale GPU infrastructure.
- Build distributed systems for cluster lifecycle management, workload scheduling, infrastructure provisioning, and platform operations.
- Develop Kubernetes APIs, controllers, operators, and other cloud-native platform capabilities.
- Improve platform reliability, scalability, security, and observability through automation and operational practices.
- Diagnose and resolve production issues involving Kubernetes, distributed systems, networking, and cloud infrastructure.
- Collaborate with infrastructure, AI, and platform engineering teams on the cloud platform.
- Contribute to technical design, architecture, mentoring, engineering practices, and on-call operations.
Requirements
- Significant professional experience designing, building, and operating production backend systems using Go or Python.
- Deep hands-on experience operating large-scale production Kubernetes or Slurm environments.
- Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, production infrastructure, networking, storage, and cloud infrastructure fundamentals.
- Experience building scalable backend services, APIs, and infrastructure automation.
- Familiarity with observability, CI/CD, testing, production operations, and incident response.
- Ability to own complex technical projects and collaborate across engineering teams.
- Preferred experience with Kubernetes operators, controllers, CRDs, or control plane components; Slurm administration or HPC; Terraform, Crossplane, Helm, Argo CD, Flux, or Kustomize; GPU infrastructure or AI platforms; Kubernetes networking, storage, or multi-tenant architecture; event-driven systems, gRPC, or distributed messaging; production CI/CD systems; or cloud-native and open-source infrastructure contributions.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
- RSUs and retirement savings benefits, including U.S. 401(k) matching and U.K. pension contributions.
- Unlimited PTO, company holidays, floating holidays, and a two-week company-wide winter break.
- Paid parental and family leave.
- Annual learning and development allowance.
- Wellness and work-from-home stipends.
- Four weeks of paid sabbatical leave after four years of service.
- Hybrid work model with flexible schedules and a minimum of two in-office days per week at the San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle hubs.
- Occasional team and company offsites.
- Complimentary meals at office hubs.
About Lightning AI
Lightning AI builds an end-to-end platform for prototyping, training, and deploying AI systems, alongside open-source tools such as PyTorch Lightning and torchmetrics. It offers a browser-based studio and managed GPU infrastructure for teams ranging from solo researchers to large enterprises, with built-in observability and controls. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in New York, the company merged with Voltage Park to pair developer-first software with large-scale, cost-efficient compute.