Senior Software Engineer - Infrastructure

Senior Software Engineer (Infrastructure) – AI-Native Startup Location: Fully Remote (US / Europe friendly time zones) Compensation: Up to $325,000 + meaningful equity About the Opportunity HireQ Talent is partnering with a high-growth, AI-native startup (Series A–C stage) building a novel platform powered by persistent, always-on cloud environments at scale. This is not a traditional DevOps or SRE role. We’re looking for a backend/application engineer who naturally took ownership of infrastructure; someone who writes production code that controls infrastructure rather than just configuring it. You’ll join a small, high-intensity team solving complex problems with no established playbook, building systems that scale across thousands of isolated customer environments. What You’ll Do Write application-layer code that governs infrastructure (VM lifecycle, containers, queues, orchestration) Build and scale per-customer isolated environments (VMs, containers, persistent workloads) Design abstractions for queues, locks, background jobs, and service orchestration Own infrastructure patterns using Infrastructure-as-Code (Pulumi, Terraform, or CDK) Work deeply across Linux systems, networking, containers, storage, and runtime debugging Ship quickly in a high-ownership, fast-iteration environment What We’re Looking For ✅ Core Profile 6–12 years experience owning core infrastructure in production Backend-leaning engineer (approx. 60% backend / 40% infrastructure) Strong experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred, AWS/GCP also welcome) Proven ability to ship production systems end-to-end ✅ Must-Have Experience Built infrastructure through application code (not just tooling/config) Experience at Series A–C startups, owning critical systems Hands-on with: Containers (Docker, Kubernetes) Infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi, Terraform, CDK) Messaging systems / queues / async processing Managed per-customer isolated environments at scale Background as a Founder or Founding Engineer, or equivalent ownership level ✅ Mindset & Traits to Prioritise Deep, genuine passion for AI (ideally from an AI-native or AI-forward company) Thrives in early-stage intensity, ships fast and takes ownership by choice Comfortable operating without a playbook, solving first-principles problems Bias for action with strong product and engineering judgment How to Stand Out Candidates who stand out will have: Built or scaled persistent, isolated customer environments (VMs or containers) Experience designing systems where each customer runs in their own environment A track record of moving fast in high-growth startup environments Evidence of balancing application engineering + infrastructure ownership Demonstrated ability to match founder-level velocity and accountability Red Flags (Not a Fit) To respect your time, this role is not aligned with candidates who: Started in IT / systems engineering and later transitioned into DevOps without strong application coding experience Are pure SRE / DevOps engineers who have not shipped production application code end-to-end Focus primarily on tooling, pipelines, or platform maintenance rather than building systems in code Why This Role Work on a hard, novel infrastructure problem at the intersection of AI and distributed systems Join a high-calibre, low-ego team with strong ownership culture Make a direct impact on core platform architecture and scale Operate in a fast-moving environment where great engineers thrive This role is only available for US Citizens with full rights to work. If this role sounds like a good fit for you – Apply now.