Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)
CleraAbout 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.