Senior Backend Engineer, Managed Kubernetes & Slurm

About the role

Lightspeed AI is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join our Managed Services team. 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.

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.

Preferred Experience

• Experience with 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.

What You’ll Need

• 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.

Compensation

We are committed to offering competitive compensation that reflects the value each team member brings to our mission. Final offers are based on factors such as experience, skills, geographic location, and role expectations. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits. The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is: $180,000 - $250,000 USD.

Benefits And Perks

• 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.