Staff Platform Infrastructure Engineer, Span.IO
$180-210k
+ Equity
Electrical equipment manufacturing
Open for applications
Electrical equipment manufacturing
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$180-210k
+ Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To enable homes to get clean energy faster, cheaper and more easily. Impacting climate change is our passion.
Role
Who you are
- We are seeking a seasoned infrastructure engineer with 8+ years demonstrating knowledge and experience in:
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent hands-on experience)
- 8+ years of experience in software engineering, DevOps, or platform engineering roles, with proven leadership in large-scale system design and operations
- Kubernetes: Deep experience in architecture, scaling, and operating Kubernetes clusters in production environments
- Python
- CI/CD: Proficiency with tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or similar, specifically geared toward microservices deployment
- Pulumi / IaC: Hands-on expertise in Pulumi or similar IaC tools (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation) for cloud resource provisioning
- Istio / Service Mesh: Proven track record in deploying and managing Istio or similar service mesh solutions
- AWS: Strong knowledge of core AWS services (EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, IoT Core) and best practices (networking, security, cost optimization)
- IoT: Familiarity with IoT technologies, protocols, and data ingestion strategies
- Developer Tooling: Experience with build tools, code quality metrics, package management, and integrated developer experiences
- Self-Starter: Demonstrated initiative in identifying problems, owning solutions, and driving innovation
- Leadership: Ability to influence and guide teams through complex technical decisions and transformations
- Collaboration: Effective communication and interpersonal skills to work across diverse teams (software, QA, product, security)
- Problem-Solving: Proven ability to diagnose, troubleshoot, and resolve complex issues in distributed systems
- Adaptability: Comfortable working in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment with evolving priorities
What the job involves
- We are seeking an experienced Staff Platform Engineer who is a self-starter with an entrepreneurial spirit to lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of our next-generation infrastructure and developer platforms
- This role will focus on leveraging Kubernetes, Pulumi, Istio, AWS, and related technologies to deliver robust and scalable systems in a microservices environment
- You will also play a critical part in shaping our CI/CD pipelines, IoT integrations, and developer tooling strategies to ensure efficient, reliable, and secure delivery of software services.If you thrive in a fast-paced setting, enjoy taking initiative, and are passionate about building innovative platform solutions, we’d love to speak with you!
- Automate & Refine: You’ll spend most of your day automating and improving how we run things in AWS and Kubernetes—basically making sure our microservices (and IoT systems) run smoothly, securely, and cost-effectively
- Support & Collaborate: You’ll jump in with the dev teams, troubleshoot issues, and share best practices so everyone’s more productive—think of it as making the lives of your teammates easier through better tools and guidance
- Strategize & Innovate: You’ll also have a seat at the table for bigger decisions—suggesting new tech, tweaking our pipelines, or finding ways to streamline processes, so we keep pushing the envelope on performance and reliability
- Platform Architecture & Strategy
- Define and drive the platform engineering vision and roadmap, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives
- Architect and implement Kubernetes-based infrastructure solutions for microservices at scale, with a strong emphasis on reliability and security
- Evaluate new technologies, tools, and frameworks to enhance the platform’s capabilities and developer experience
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Automation
- Develop and maintain infrastructure-as-code (IaC) solutions using Pulumi to automate provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management of cloud resources
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify and automate manual processes, streamlining operations and CI/CD pipelines
- Microservices CI/CD Pipeline
- Design, build, and maintain continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for microservices
- Ensure best practices for testing, observability, and security are baked into the pipeline workflows
- Identify and implement optimizations to reduce build, test, and deployment times, increasing reliability and quality
- Service Mesh & Network Management
- Lead the deployment and maintenance of Istio to enable efficient traffic management, observability, and security across microservices
- Oversee the lifecycle management of Istio and related service mesh components, ensuring minimal downtime and seamless upgrades
- Cloud & IoT Integrations
- Architect and manage AWS services (e.g., EC2, EKS, Lambda, S3, IoT Core) for scalable and cost-effective solutions
- Collaborate with IoT-focused teams to design and implement secure and robust data ingestion, storage, and processing pipelines
- Developer Tooling & Enablement
- Own the developer experience by providing and maintaining internal tools, environments, and frameworks that boost productivity and quality
- Work closely with software engineers to integrate best practices, guidelines, and tools that streamline development workflows
- Leadership & Mentoring
- Act as a technical mentor, sharing knowledge and best practices within the engineering organization
- Guide engineering teams on platform adoption, architecture decisions, and complex troubleshooting
- Represent platform engineering in cross-departmental meetings, shaping and influencing strategic decisions
- Monitoring & Reliability
- Implement observability solutions (logging, monitoring, alerting) for critical platform components using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or equivalent
- Define SLOs/SLAs and ensure the platform meets or exceeds reliability standards
Our take
Span helps homeowners looking to improve their energy resilience by replacing electric panels, many of them decades old, with a flexible smart panel that helps users monitor and control their energy usage from a single app.
Founded in just 2018, Span has made great strides in both price and technological development and has won the International Builders' Show 2022 Best Energy Efficient Product award for its Gen 2 smart Panel. Significant funding rounds have propelled product development, including a future-looking integration of its equipment with that of solar inverter, battery, and EV charger manufacturers.
This fast-developing and innovative answer to a previously stagnant home energy feature directly caters to the increasing demand for energy efficiency in the home. This is exemplified by a 2024 partnership with PulteGroup, the third-largest homebuilder in the US. With CEO Arch Rao at the helm, previously head of Products, Application & Sales Engineering at Tesla, Span seems likely to continue on its winning streak with increasingly affordable renewable energy products.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
37% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Apr 2023
$96m
SERIES B
Mar 2022
$90m
SERIES B
Total funding: $229.8m
Company benefits
- Competitive compensation and early equity at a well-funded, fast-growing, venture-backed company (read more on why Amazon and others invested in SPAN here and here)
- A sunny 20,000 sqft hardware lab + office space in SOMA, a stone’s throw from Caltrain and close to BART
- Flexible hours and vacation time - we simultaneously work hard and make space for the important stuff
- Additional SPAN holidays in celebration of causes we believe in (i.e. Black History Day, Women’s History Day, Earth Day and Gay Pride & Juneteenth among others)
- Comprehensive benefits include a choice of medical plans; dental, vision, life, and disability insurance
- Diversity - we are serious about this. SPAN embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds,
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Articles
Leadership
Arch Padmanabhan Rao
(Founder & CEO )After graduating from Stanford with an MS in Mechanical Engineering, Arch was an Energy Consultant for LCG Consulting and Technical Advisor for The Westly Group. They co-founded Verdigris, which used AI to eliminate electricity waste and was the Head of Products, Application and Sales engineering at Tesla Motors before founding Span.
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