Cloud Engineer

Chess.com, LLC; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Chess.com, LLC is seeking a Cloud Engineer to scale a global, high-traffic platform. You will own cloud-native infrastructure, multi-region resilience, and performance optimization across Kubernetes, Terraform, and GitOps tooling.

You will collaborate with development teams to implement cloud service integrations, build CI/CD pipelines with ArgoCD, and enhance observability using Prometheus, Mimir, ES, Vector, and Tempo. This is a remote-friendly, mission-driven team.

Qualifications

• 7+ years managing large-scale cloud-native distributed systems.
• Expert Kubernetes proficiency for cluster deployment and orchestration.
• Advanced Infrastructure as Code with Terraform in production environments.
• Strong Golang programming with performance optimization.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems design and failure modes.
• Extensive experience with major cloud platforms (GCP, AWS) and cost optimization.
• Proficiency with GitOps and CI/CD practices in modern deployments.
• Hands-on observability using metrics, logging, and tracing at scale.

Responsibilities

• Architect and optimize cloud-native infrastructure for multi-regional scale.
• Lead performance optimization by analyzing Golang and TypeScript codebases for bottlenecks.
• Design multi-regional, resilient systems with large CPU footprints across regions.
• Run and evolve a Rancher-managed private Kubernetes cloud and coordinate with cloud regions.
• Execute incident response and drive operational excellence for critical infra.
• Develop high-performance integration patterns for distributed data processing.
• Collaborate with development teams to implement cloud service integrations.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code with Terraform across all cloud resources.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with GitOps using ArgoCD.
• Monitor and enhance observability with Prometheus, Mimir, ES, Vector, Tempo.

Skills

Kubernetes

Terraform

Golang

GitOps

Distributed systems

Multi-region

Observability

Linux

Tools

ArgoCD

GKE

Rancher

Prometheus

Mimir

Tempo

Vector

ES

Kafka

Redis

Job description

Chess.com is one of the largest gaming sites in the world and the #1 platform for playing, learning, and enjoying chess.

We are a team of 600+ fully remote people in 60+ countries working hard to serve the global chess community. We are here to support 250M+ chess players worldwide with the best possible product, content, and tools to serve the community!

We are a tech company. A gaming company. A content company. And we do it all with passion and commitment to the game. Above all we prize our mission-driven, flat, life-celebrating, no-corporate culture, and we look forward to meeting you and learning more about what you can bring to the team.

About The Role

The Cloud Engineer role is critical to scaling Chess.com's infrastructure to support millions of daily chess games and serve global users. This position combines site reliability engineering expertise with cloud infrastructure management, directly impacting system performance, reliability, and scalability across Chess.com's multi-regional distributed architecture. The role requires deep technical expertise in both infrastructure automation and application optimization to maintain Chess.com's position as a high-traffic gaming platform while enabling rapid feature development and deployment.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Architect and optimize cloud-native infrastructure using Kubernetes, Terraform, and GitOps tools to support millions of concurrent chess games across multiple global regions
• Lead performance optimization initiatives by analyzing Golang and TypeScript codebases to identify and resolve bottlenecks at scale, with specific focus on chess programming optimizations
• Design and implement multi-regional resilient systems capable of handling extreme scale challenges including managing 1 million+ CPUs across dozens of regions
• Run and evolve our private Kubernetes cloud on bare-metal: a Rancher-managed fleet in our own datacenters that carries compute and IO intensive workloads, operated as one platform with GKE regions, with workloads placed wherever they get the best cost and performance.
• Execute incident response and operational excellence serving as primary technical resource for critical infrastructure issues, ensuring rapid resolution and minimal downtime
• Develop high-performance integration patterns for distributed systems handling extensive data volumes while maintaining reliability and scalability targets
• Collaborate with development teams to implement cloud service integration best practices and optimize application deployment architectures
• Implement Infrastructure as Code practices using Terraform to manage all cloud resources, ensuring consistent, automated, and scalable deployment processes
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with GitOps approaches using tools like ArgoCD to enable rapid, reliable software delivery
• Monitor and enhance system observability through implementation of modern monitoring stacks including Prometheus, Mimir, ES, Vector and Tempo

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience managing large-scale, cloud-native distributed systems with proven ability to handle high-traffic production environments
• Expert-level proficiency with Kubernetes including cluster deployment, management, and advanced orchestration patterns
• Advanced Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform for managing complex cloud and Kubernetes resources in production
• Strong programming skills in Golang with demonstrated ability to optimize high-performance services and troubleshoot complex codebases
• Deep understanding of distributed systems design including failure modes, architectural principles, and data modeling strategies
• Extensive experience with major cloud platforms (GCP, AWS) including advanced services, networking, and cost optimization
• Proficiency with GitOps and CI/CD methodologies using modern deployment automation and continuous integration practices
• Hands-on experience with observability tools including metrics, logging, and distributed tracing systems for high-scale environments
• Strong Linux systems administration skills with deep knowledge of system internals and performance optimization
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills for working effectively in globally distributed teams

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Chess programming and optimization experience including bit-level manipulations and performance tuning for gaming applications
• TypeScript development experience for full-stack infrastructure and tooling development
• Service mesh implementation experience particularly in hybrid multi-cloud and bare-metal environments
• Message broker expertise with systems like Kafka, PubSub, and Redis for event-driven architectures
• Gaming industry experience with understanding of real-time systems and high-concurrency requirements
• Experience with Google Cloud partnerships and direct collaboration with cloud provider engineering teams
• C/C++ programming experience for low-level system optimizations
• Advanced networking knowledge for multi-regional infrastructure and hybrid cloud connectivity
• Experience managing bare-metal infrastructure and integrating with cloud-native services
• Database performance optimization experience with large-scale data systems and indexing strategies

About the Opportunity

• This is a full-time opportunity
• We are 100% remote (work from anywhere!)