Staff Software Engineer, Developer Infrastructure
Sesame · San Francisco, CA · 3 wk ago
Engineering$175k–$280k/yrFull-time
Responsibilities
- Own and lead the developer experience from onboarding through deploy — dev environments, build systems, CI/CD, test infrastructure, and deploy tooling
- Build frameworks and tooling that make CI fast, reliable, and effortless. Engineers shouldn't have to think about it — it should just work
- Design and build self-serve tooling that lets product and ML engineers move quickly without filing tickets or waiting on you
- Lead teams toward clear, reliable visibility into what's in production, when it shipped, and how it's performing
- Explore and lead what it means to bring AI-assisted intelligence into developer tooling — this is a genuinely exciting frontier, and we're approaching it thoughtfully
- Build and maintain the complex systems that support rapid development: build systems, dependency management, test infrastructure, and developer environments all need ongoing care
- Lead creative thinking about what a performance-sensitive stack — GPUs, co-located servers, real-time requirements — means for the developer environment. There's no established playbook here, and that's part of the appeal
Requirements
- You're a thoughtful software engineer who also loves infrastructure. You write clean, well-designed code and lead by example in caring about the experience of the people using what you build
- You've worked on CI/CD systems and have real experience building and leading durable solutions to the hard problems — slow builds, flaky tests, painful merges
- You've built and led developer tooling that other engineers genuinely wanted to use: self-serve frameworks, CLI tools, build systems, environment setup, or debugging tools
- You're comfortable in Python and/or TypeScript — our monorepo leans on both
- You have 7+ years in software engineering, with meaningful time spent building and leading developer infrastructure or tooling initiatives
- Automation is your default. You build solutions proactively — doing something manually twice feels like a problem worth solving
- You think from the perspective of the engineers using your work, and lead with empathy. Developer experience isn't a buzzword to you — it's the whole job
Preferred Qualifications
- Monorepo tooling and build systems (e.g. Bazel, Pants, Monorepo, Nx, or similar approaches)
- Cloud-based development environments (e.g. Coder, Codespaces, devcontainers)
- CI platform depth — going beyond workflow files into managing runners, optimising costs, and building custom tooling
- Containerised builds and local/CI parity (e.g. Docker, Dagger)
- Deploy pipeline patterns: canary deployments, feature flags, automated rollbacks, GitOps
- AI coding tools — not just using them, but leading the configuration, customisation, or building of tooling around them
- Security engineering in developer workflows: dependency scanning, secrets management, supply chain controls
- GCP experience
Benefits
Full-time Employee Benefits:
- 401(k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
- 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
- Unlimited PTO and sick time
- Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)
- Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options
Benefits do not apply to contingent/contract workers.
Compensation Range
$175K - $280K