Senior Backend Engineer, Managed Kubernetes & Slurm

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction. Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in. We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

About the role

Lightning AI runs one of the largest AI-native clouds, with 25,000+ H100, B200, and GB300 GPUs powering organizations building, training, and deploying AI at scale. To deliver that experience, our Managed Services team builds the systems that make complex GPU infrastructure simple, reliable, and easy for customers to use without managing the underlying infrastructure themselves.

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Managed Services team, you'll build the control planes, backend services, and automation that provision, operate, and scale Kubernetes and Slurm clusters across our GPU fleet. Your work will turn raw GPU capacity into production-ready environments where customers can seamlessly train models, run inference, and deploy AI workloads. This isn't a traditional SaaS backend role. You'll solve challenging distributed systems and cloud infrastructure problems, building the automation and platform capabilities that keep large-scale Kubernetes and Slurm environments scalable, observable, and resilient.

This role is based in one of our U.S. office hubs (San Francisco, NYC, or Seattle, with SF and NYC preferred), with a minimum of 2 in-office days per week and occasional team and company offsites. We are not able to provide visa sponsorship for this position at this time.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate backend services in Go or Python that power Lightning AI's managed infrastructure platform.
• Develop control plane services that provision, orchestrate, and manage Kubernetes and Slurm clusters across large-scale GPU infrastructure.
• Build distributed systems that automate cluster lifecycle management, workload scheduling, infrastructure provisioning, and platform operations.
• Develop platform capabilities using Kubernetes APIs, controllers, operators, and other cloud-native technologies.
• Improve the reliability, scalability, security, and observability of our managed platform through automation and operational excellence.
• Diagnose and resolve complex production issues across Kubernetes, distributed systems, networking, and cloud infrastructure.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, AI, and platform engineering teams to shape the future of our cloud platform.
• Contribute to technical design, architecture, mentoring, engineering best practices, and on-call operations.

Requirements

• Significant professional experience designing, building, and operating production backend systems using Go or Python.
• Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes or Slurm, including operating large-scale production environments.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, and production infrastructure.
• Experience designing and building scalable backend services, APIs, and automation for infrastructure or platform operations.
• Strong understanding of networking, storage, and cloud infrastructure fundamentals.
• Familiarity with observability, CI/CD, testing, production operations, and incident response.
• Ability to own complex technical projects while collaborating effectively across engineering teams.

Skills

Ideal Experience

• Experience with one or more of the following: Kubernetes platform development, including operators, controllers, CRDs, or control plane components
• Slurm administration, scheduling, or HPC environments
• Infrastructure-as-Code or GitOps tooling such as Terraform, Crossplane, Helm, Argo CD, Flux, or Kustomize
• GPU infrastructure, AI platforms, or large-scale compute environments
• Kubernetes networking, storage, or multi-tenant platform architecture
• Event-driven systems, gRPC, or distributed messaging
• Building CI/CD systems for production environments
• Contributions to cloud-native or open source infrastructure projects

Pay

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is: $180,000 - $250,000 USD.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
• Meaningful Equity: RSUs that give employees a stake in the company's long-term success.
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) matching (U.S.) and pension contributions (U.K.).
• Flexible Time Off: Unlimited PTO, company holidays, and floating holidays to support work-life balance.
• Company-Wide Winter Break: Two weeks of company closure each winter to disconnect and recharge.
• Paid Parental & Family Leave: Paid leave to support you and your family through life's important moments.
• Professional Development: Annual learning and development allowance to support your professional growth.
• Wellness Benefits: Wellness and work-from-home stipends to support your physical and mental well-being.
• Sabbatical Program: Four weeks of paid sabbatical leave after four years of service.
• Flexible Work: Flexible schedules and a hybrid work model for our office-based teams.
• In-Office Meals: Complimentary meals at our office hubs.

Benefits may vary by location, team, and role.