Staff Cloud Engineer, Grindr
$134.4-179.3k
+ Equity + Bonus
More information about location
Social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people
Be an early applicant
Social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$134.4-179.3k
+ Equity + Bonus
More information about location
201-500 employees
Company mission
To make the world where the lives of our global community are free, equal, and just.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of engineering experience, including 5+ years focused on cloud infrastructure in production environments
- Deep AWS expertise across services such as EKS, EC2, IAM, RDS, ElastiCache, Route53, Kafka/MSK, and VPC networking
- Strong hands-on experience operating Kubernetes platforms in production at scale
- 5+ years working with infrastructure tooling including Terraform, Helm, Docker, CI/CD systems, and GitOps-style workflows
- Experience designing and operating distributed systems with strong understanding of scalability, resiliency, and infrastructure performance characteristics
- Proven ability to establish infrastructure standards and drive adoption across engineering organizations
- Strong infrastructure automation mindset with experience reducing operational overhead through tooling and platform improvements
- Actively integrates AI tools into engineering workflows for automation, observability, operational analysis, or developer productivity
- You May Thrive in this Role if You:
- Are AI-native or rapidly becoming so — you actively use AI tools in your workflow and continuously explore new operational and engineering use cases
- Have experience supporting SOX compliance in a public company environment and understand infrastructure governance and control requirements
- Think in platforms and systems, not tickets — you build reusable solutions that scale across teams
- Treat reliability, security, and scalability as foundational design principles
- Have successfully driven infrastructure standards adoption across multiple engineering teams
- Are comfortable influencing technical direction and collaborating across teams on complex infrastructure initiatives
- Enjoy balancing hands-on technical execution with long-term platform strategy
What the job involves
- The Cloud Engineering team builds and operates the infrastructure platform that powers Grindr globally. We own AWS architecture, Kubernetes platforms, infrastructure automation, developer enablement, and the cloud standards that product engineering teams build on every day
- As a Staff Cloud Engineer, you’ll help shape the technical direction of Grindr’s cloud infrastructure platform. You’ll partner closely with engineering teams across the company to define scalable infrastructure patterns, improve developer experience, and evolve the systems that support millions of users globally
- This is a high-ownership role at a pivotal moment. As Grindr accelerates its AI-native roadmap, infrastructure becomes a strategic advantage — enabling rapid experimentation, global scale, and high-availability systems that serve millions of users every day
- Architect, document, and evolve Grindr’s cloud infrastructure platform across AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform — establishing the standards and patterns engineering teams build on
- Design and implement scalable infrastructure solutions that improve developer velocity, platform reliability, and operational efficiency across multiple AWS environments
- Lead capacity planning and performance optimization for high-volume, globally distributed systems running on EKS
- Drive infrastructure automation initiatives across provisioning, deployments, observability, security, and platform operations
- Partner closely with product engineering teams to design infrastructure patterns for new microservices and platform capabilities
- Contribute to cloud architecture decisions, infrastructure best practices, and operational readiness initiatives across the engineering organization
- Mentor engineers on infrastructure design, Kubernetes adoption, and cloud-native development practices
- Evaluate and integrate emerging AI-driven infrastructure tooling and operational workflows into the platform engineering ecosystem
Our take
Grindr stands out as one of the foremost dating platforms, recognized for its role in fostering connections within the LGBT+ community. Initially conceived as a dating app tailored to gay men - an innovative concept at its inception - the company has evolved to embrace a broader spectrum of identities, proudly positioning itself as "the world's largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people".
Offering a complimentary version alongside premium subscription tiers like "Grindr Xtra" and "Grindr Unlimited", Grindr follows the familiar model of many social and dating applications, Despite facing competition from platforms such as Jack'd and Scruff, Grindr maintains its prominence within the market.
In the dynamic landscape of digital connections, Grindr's evolution from a niche dating service to a comprehensive LGBT+ networking hub underscores its enduring relevance. As it navigates the challenges of fierce competition, Grinder remains a pivotal space for individuals to forge meaningful connections and cultivate community within the LGBT+ space.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (1 round)
Jan 2016
$93m
LATE VC
Total funding: $93m
Company benefits
- 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision premiums for employees
- 401k Matching (up to 6%)
- Flexible PTO, sick-time, holidays, and two company wide shut-down weeks + an annual travel and leisure stipend
- Equity for all employees
- Monthly lifestyle stipend for food and wellness as well as fully catered onsite breakfast, lunch, and snacks
- Community projects and charitable giving stipend to support LGBTQ+ non-profit organizations alongside Grindr for Equality
- Gender Affirmation Fund for transgender and gender non-conforming employees
- Queer-inclusive health benefits including LGBTQ consultative healthcare and expanded HRT shipped directly to employees in eligible states
- Monthly commuter stipend to get you to and from the office on in-person collaboration days
Company HQ
Central LA, Los Angeles, CA
Leadership
George Arison
(CEO)Former Product Manager at Google. They are a founding member of Shift. They took over the role of CEO at Grindr from Jeff Bonforte in October 2022.
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