Software Engineer | Infra

Formal
San Francisco, CA
On-site

Who this role is best for

Aimed at mid-to-senior-level infrastructure engineers who lead cloud and Kubernetes operations.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with expertise in cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes operations, particularly on AWS or GCP
    — “Experience building and operating production cloud infrastructure on AWS or Google Cloud using Terraform.”
  • Individuals who have successfully automated operational tasks and led incident resolution in distributed systems
    — “A track record of automating operational work and owning services through incidents and upgrades.”
  • Engineers with strong Linux and networking skills, including TLS and load balancing
    — “Strong Linux and networking fundamentals, including DNS, TLS, and load balancing.”

Things to consider

  • Candidates should be prepared for a high-impact role in a fast-growing, venture-backed company.
    — “Formal is backed by top-tiers VCs including Thrive Capital and Y Combinator”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with Kubernetes cluster management and incident response in your resume and interviews.
    — “Lead our migration to Kubernetes and operate reliable clusters, networking, access controls, and data services.”
  • Emphasize your background in optimizing data pipelines and reducing latency or indexing lag.
    — “Scale Kafka-to-Quickwit ingestion and search; improve throughput, indexing lag, API latency, and storage costs.”
  • Showcase your ability to automate infrastructure with Terraform and Helm in your application materials.
    — “Automate provisioning with Terraform and Helm; improve CI/CD, capacity planning, backups, and recovery.”
  • Demonstrate your experience with on-prem deployments and customer environments, if applicable.
    — “Build repeatable on-prem installations and upgrades, including configuration, data migrations, and rollback.”
  • Include examples of reliability targets and alert systems you've implemented in past roles.
    — “Establish useful alerts and reliability targets; lead incident response and eliminate recurring failures.”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · MediumAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Kubernetes migration
  • reliable cluster operation
  • data pipeline optimization
Typical background
experience with cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes

Skills & requirements

Required

Cloud InfrastructureKubernetesNetworkingLinuxCI/CDObservability

Preferred

QuickwitKafkaPostgreSQLTemporal

Stack & domain

AWSGoogle CloudTerraformKubernetesGoPythonRustCI/CDObservabilityData PipelinesDistributed ApisNetwork SecurityInfrastructure

About the role

Original posting from Formal via Ashby

ABOUT FORMAL

Formal is building a network security platform for the AI era. As agents gain access to sensitive data and production systems, organizations need control over the actions they take and the data they receive. We enforce those controls directly in the network path, with a shared policy layer for humans and agents across databases, infrastructure, APIs, and AI tools.

We are trusted by leading companies such as Cursor http://cursor.com, Decagon https://decagon.ai, Notion http://Notion.com, and more to solve problems across data security and compliance, data quality management, and infrastructure access.

Formal is backed by top-tiers VCs including Thrive Capital and Y Combinator with angel investors that include executives and founders from Datadog, Clickhouse, Plaid, and Vanta.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Formal secures billions of requests daily. Join a small team tackling the infrastructure behind that scale: Kafka-to-Quickwit log ingestion, fast search and APIs, and reliable cloud and on-prem deployments. You'll help lead our move to Kubernetes and make the platform easier to deploy, operate, and upgrade in our cloud and customer environments.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

  • Lead our migration to Kubernetes and operate reliable clusters, networking, access controls, and data services.
  • Scale Kafka-to-Quickwit ingestion and search; improve throughput, indexing lag, API latency, and storage costs.
  • Build repeatable on-prem installations and upgrades, including configuration, data migrations, and rollback.
  • Establish useful alerts and reliability targets; lead incident response and eliminate recurring failures.
  • Automate provisioning with Terraform and Helm; improve CI/CD, capacity planning, backups, and recovery.

WHAT YOU NEED

  • Experience building and operating production cloud infrastructure on AWS or Google Cloud using Terraform.
  • Experience operating production Kubernetes clusters, including deployments, ingress, autoscaling, and upgrades.
  • Strong Linux and networking fundamentals, including DNS, TLS, and load balancing.
  • Experience with Go, Python, Rust, or another relevant programming language.
  • Experience with CI/CD, observability, and operating data pipelines or distributed APIs in production.
  • A track record of automating operational work and owning services through incidents and upgrades.

NICE-TO-HAVES

  • Experience deploying and supporting on-prem software across customer networks and infrastructure.
  • Experience with Quickwit or similar search systems, Kafka, PostgreSQL, or Temporal.
  • Experience with Helm, Bazel, self-hosted CI runners, or environments for AI coding agents.

COMPENSATION

  • This role offers cash compensation and a stock options grant.
  • The positioning of offers within a certain range depends on various factors, including: candidate experience, qualifications, skills, business requirements and geographical location.

BENEFITS (FOR U.S.-BASED FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES)

  • 100% medical, dental & vision insurance coverage for you
  • Partially covered for your dependents
  • Flexible PTO

Source: Formal careers (Ashby)

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