Staff / Senior Staff Kubernetes Platform Engineer, Groq
Infrastructure, GroqMetal
$270.4-401.6k
Salary dependent on skill level. + Long-Term Incentive (LTI) Program
AI semiconductor chip manufacturer
Job no longer available
AI semiconductor chip manufacturer
201-500 employees
Job no longer available
$270.4-401.6k
Salary dependent on skill level. + Long-Term Incentive (LTI) Program
201-500 employees
Company mission
To increase developer velocity in machine learning by leading the way with simple, fast, innovative solutions.
Role
Who you are
- Experienced software engineers first: Strong experience designing, implementing, testing, shipping, and maintaining production software
- Deep Kubernetes platform engineering experience: Experience with operators/controllers, CRDs, admission control, node lifecycle, cluster services, and production-grade platform design
- Strong distributed-systems expertise: Practical experience reasoning about CAP, consensus, leader election, eventual consistency, state reconciliation, fault domains, and recovery
- Experience developing infrastructure software: Experience working through a robust SDLC, including design review, automated testing, CI/CD, staged rollout, rollback, observability, and incident learning
- Experience delivering Kubernetes as a Service: Practical knowledge and experience gained from delivering Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, or infrastructure control planes as a commercially critical or externally consumed product is highly valued, but not required
- Hands-on experience using coding agents: Experience using tools such as Codex, Claude Code, or similar systems/harnesses in substantive engineering work is highly valued; real-world practice matters more than commercial deployment
- Steeped in the domain: Experience at a hyperscaler or neocloud supporting AI workloads or commercializing GPU clusters, with a strong understanding of the operational and product challenges of large-scale accelerator infrastructure
- Comfort with ambiguity: Experience with inference platforms, accelerator/GPU infrastructure, device plugins, cloud infrastructure, or customer-facing platform products
What the job involves
- GroqMetal is building the infrastructure platform that turns large-scale physical compute into a reliable, isolated, customer-consumable AI infrastructure
- This is a hands-on Senior Staff role: you will write production software as part of a software engineering team
- You will lead the design of a Kubernetes-based software platform focused on large-scale AI training and inference workloads
- You will be a key technical leader in building the systems that turn cutting-edge physical infrastructure into a stable product
- Location: This role will be based in one of our three hiring hubs: the Dallas, San Francisco, or New York City area. The person hired for this role must be based in one of these three areas. You’ll have the flexibility to work remotely while we establish our local Groq office, with the expectation that this role will transition to onsite once the office opens
- Design and build core Groq platform systems: APIs, controllers, operators, reconciliation loops, and infrastructure abstractions
- Remain deeply hands-on: Write, review, test, debug, and operate substantial production code while providing Senior Staff technical leadership
- Embrace the market: Leverage Kubernetes to build a commercial product for AI infrastructure, delivering production-grade Kubernetes services for dedicated customers running large-scale AI training and inference workloads
- Build a system, not just deploy technology: Apply distributed-systems principles to partial failure, retries, concurrency, consistency, idempotency, availability, and recovery
- Design for stability and robustness: Design stable platform APIs and contracts that decouple the customer experience from changes in backend infrastructure
- Collaborate with a team of experts: Work across infrastructure, inference, networking, infosec, and other teams to turn ambiguous platform needs into production systems
- Purposeful Hiring: You’re not here by accident, and neither is anyone else. Every teammate is handpicked with intention because who we build with matters
- Builders Wanted: You’re not just riding the rocket ship, you’re building it. Your work directly shapes the trajectory of our company
- Mission-Driven Work: We’re here to make a real impact. Our mission fuels everything we do
- Tackling Hard Problems: If easy isn’t your thing, you’re in the right place. We solve some of the most complex and exciting challenges in our space
- Excellence Is The Standard: High performance isn’t just encouraged, it’s the baseline. And it’s contagious
Our take
Groq is an exciting semiconductor startup focused on creating advanced chips designed specifically for AI applications. It emerged as a challenger to Nvidia's dominance, by focusing on speed and efficiency for AI deployment.
While Nvidia's GPUs handle both training and running AI models, Groq's LPUs are optimized for inference tasks. This is the execution phase of AI, where outputs are generated after the model is trained. This sharp focus enabled Groq to generate both interest and investment, which has fuelled scaling and deployment efforts.
Playing a significant role in the AI chip market, Groq has partnered with companies like Meta and Samsung, as well as sovereign entities like Saudi Aramco. In 2025, it entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia, which demonstrates the regard in which its technology is held. It also raised substantial new funding in 2026 which supports its continued growth.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-19% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jun 2026
$650m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Sep 2025
$750m
LATE VC
Total funding: $2.5bn
Company HQ
Old Mountain View, Mountain View, CA
Leadership
Adam Winter
(Interim CEO)Joined the company as VP/GM in 2024, taking up this interim position in 2026. Previously, Adam was SVP then Advisor at Safe Security, and co-founded ThreeCS. They have also invested in and advised at other startups.
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