Staff Infrastructure Engineer

About the role

As a Staff Infrastructure Engineer, you'll own the design, operation, and maturity of our Kubernetes platforms and service mesh ecosystem. We run 100+ Kubernetes clusters across AWS Cloud and Outposts. Kong Mesh sits at the heart of how our services talk to each other — securing traffic, managing policies, handling retries and timeouts. You'll bring expertise on Kubernetes and mesh and help us operate these platforms with confidence and discipline.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate our Kubernetes platform across EKS clusters. Set standards for cluster configuration, workload isolation, resource management, and cost optimization. Build the runbooks and automation that make operations predictable.
• Own the Kong Mesh ecosystem. Mature it from a deployment into a production-grade platform with clear patterns for service-to-service security, traffic management, and observability.
• Define and implement service-to-service communication patterns. Work with teams on zero-trust networking, certificate lifecycle, mTLS policies, and how to debug when things go wrong.
• Build infrastructure-as-code, automation, and tooling that reduce toil and let teams operate reliably.
• Define what good looks like for our Infrastructure platform. Set SLOs, monitor reliability, and hold the line on quality.
• Lead incident response when Kubernetes or mesh issues impact services. Understand root cause, fix it, and make sure it doesn't happen the same way twice.
• Mentor engineers on Kubernetes internals, mesh design, and distributed systems thinking. Raise the bar on technical understanding across the team.
• Evaluate infrastructure tools and platforms. Understand what to build, what to buy, and what to integrate.
• Work with platform and product teams to understand what they need from Kubernetes and mesh. Feed that into our roadmap and direction.
• Contribute to broader infrastructure initiatives on observability, cost optimization, and resilience. Own technical scope on assigned work.

Requirements

• 7+ years working with platform infrastructure, SRE, cloud infrastructure, or related work. You've built and operated large systems and shipped real things.
• Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes. You understand cluster architecture, multi-cluster operations, scheduling, networking, security, and how to debug when things break.
• Strong expertise with modern service mesh platforms. Experience with Kong Mesh, Istio, Linkerd, or Envoy-based systems. Comfortable with mTLS, traffic policies, and zero-trust networking.
• Working knowledge of AWS. You understand VPCs, networking, security, and how to operate in hybrid environments including Outposts.
• You understand distributed systems. You know the tradeoffs involved in service-to-service communication at scale. You think about failure modes.
• You've defined and tracked SLOs/SLIs for infrastructure services. You use metrics that matter to users and the business, not just technical metrics.
• You code in at least one modern language. You build tools and automation. You're comfortable both writing code and operating systems.
• You've driven operational improvements through automation. You see toil and build solutions that scale. You prevent the same failure from happening twice.
• You mentor and influence other engineers. You raise the technical bar. You help people understand why things work the way they do.
• You communicate well. You can explain technical constraints to non-technical people. You influence technical direction.
• You care about doing things right. You own problems end-to-end. You push for continuous improvement.
• Bonus - You've used Envoy in production.
• You've operated AWS Outposts or hybrid cloud infrastructure.
• You hold CNCF Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKS, CKAD).
• You've worked in regulated industries where network segmentation, auditability, strict controls, and uptime matter.
• You're familiar with Datadog or other observability platforms. You've used eBPF-based networking tools like Cilium.

Qualifications

• 7+ years working with platform infrastructure, SRE, cloud infrastructure, or related work. You've built and operated large systems and shipped real things.
• Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes. You understand cluster architecture, multi-cluster operations, scheduling, networking, security, and how to debug when things break.
• Strong expertise with modern service mesh platforms. Experience with Kong Mesh, Istio, Linkerd, or Envoy-based systems. Comfortable with mTLS, traffic policies, and zero-trust networking.
• Working knowledge of AWS. You understand VPCs, networking, security, and how to operate in hybrid environments including Outposts.
• You understand distributed systems. You know the tradeoffs involved in service-to-service communication at scale. You think about failure modes.
• You've defined and tracked SLOs/SLIs for infrastructure services. You use metrics that matter to users and the business, not just technical metrics.
• You code in at least one modern language. You build tools and automation. You're comfortable both writing code and operating systems.
• You've driven operational improvements through automation. You see toil and build solutions that scale. You prevent the same failure from happening twice.
• You mentor and influence other engineers. You raise the technical bar. You help people understand why things work the way they do.
• You communicate well. You can explain technical constraints to non-technical people. You influence technical direction.
• You care about doing things right. You own problems end-to-end. You push for continuous improvement.
• Bonus - You've used Envoy in production.
• You've operated AWS Outposts or hybrid cloud infrastructure.
• You hold CNCF Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKS, CKAD).
• You've worked in regulated industries where network segmentation, auditability, strict controls, and uptime matter.
• You're familiar with Datadog or other observability platforms. You've used eBPF-based networking tools like Cilium.

Skills

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and modern service mesh platforms.
• Experience with AWS and hybrid cloud environments.
• Understanding of distributed systems and service-to-service communication at scale.
• Ability to define and track Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language and experience building tools and automation.
• Experience with incident response and problem-solving in complex systems.
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills.
• Experience in regulated industries with a focus on network segmentation, auditability, and uptime.
• Familiarity with Datadog or similar observability tools.
• Experience with Envoy or similar load balancers.

Benefits

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance
• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• A 401(k) matching program
• Commuter benefits
• Pet insurance
• Short-term and long-term incentive compensation
• 14 paid company holidays
• Paid personal time off

Pay

The applicable salary range for this position is $159,000 - $208,950 USD, which is dependent on a variety of factors including relevant experience, location, business needs and market demand. This role may offer the following benefits: medical, vision, and dental insurance; life insurance; disability insurance; a 401(k) matching program; among other employee benefits. This role may also be eligible for short-term or long-term incentive compensation, including, but not limited to, cash bonuses and stock program participation.

Schedule

This role may offer a hybrid schedule, combining remote and in-office work.