Distributed Systems Engineer

Fluidstack; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Health/dental/vision insurance

Generous PTO

Job summary

Fluidstack is seeking a highly capable engineer to own the observability platform, build data pipelines, and define the API surface for our hyperscale infrastructure. You will design and operate a Kubernetes-based production control plane, ensure fleet state accuracy, and onboard new hardware through IaaS processes.

You should be comfortable with AI tooling, distributed systems, and creating scalable interfaces that other teams rely on.

Qualifications

• You treat toil as a bug and automate repeatable tasks.
• You design APIs that age well and avoid leaky abstractions.
• You embrace ambiguity, map the domain, and communicate clearly to others.
• You learn quickly and gain competence in unfamiliar domains.
• You carry a pager, run incidents, and fix root causes.
• You are fluent with AI tooling and AI coding assistants.
• You have shipped production services used by other teams at scale.
• Bonus: distributed systems and data pipeline engineering, time-series stacks, API versioning, workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own the observability platform: build data pipelines, decoration/correlation engine, and health-check framework.
• Define and build the API surface for infrastructure and tooling.
• Build production control plane and Kubernetes-based infrastructure.
• Own fleet state as source of truth, maintain SLOs and lifecycle state.
• Land new hardware into the platform via IaaS processes (ZTP, DHCP, DNS, artifacts).

Skills

APIs design

Distributed systems

Data pipelines

Go

Python

PostgreSQL

AI tooling

Tools

Temporal

Cadence

Prometheus

VictoriaMetrics

Redfish

Go

Python

PostgreSQL

Job description

Role Scope

• Own the observability platform: build and operate data pipelines, decoration and correlation engine, and health‑check framework that make the fleet legible — from site down to device and link. No other team should need to scrape production directly to answer a question.
• Define and build the API surface for infrastructure. Design the contracts between production infrastructure and every tool that touches it. All other teams at Fluidstack use your tooling to manage and operate our hyperscale fleet.
• Build the production control plane: unified machine management, actual state inspection, distributed command execution — and the Kubernetes‑based infrastructure that underpins it all.
• Own fleet state as source of truth. Maintain SLOs, site lifecycle state, and integration with internal infrastructure management and customer‑facing operations platforms so that what the system says about itself matches reality.
• Land new hardware into the platform cleanly. ZTP, DHCP, DNS, artifacts — every new XPU generation and site integration goes through IaaS before production.

What We're Looking For

• You treat toil as a bug. If something requires a human to do it twice, you build the thing that makes it not require a human.
• You design APIs that age well. You've felt the pain of a leaky abstraction at scale and you don't repeat it.
• You move toward ambiguity, not away from it. You walk into the fog, build the map, and explain it to everyone else.
• You learn at a steep slope. You reach real competence in an unfamiliar domain fast. We value this over existing expertise.
• You carry a pager without flinching. You run the incident, write the postmortem, fix the systemic cause, and move on.
• You are fluent with AI tooling. LLM APIs, MCP servers, and agentic frameworks, and you drive Claude Code, Cursor, or similar every day.
• You have shipped production services that other teams depend on at scale, and you’re comfortable in any language using AI coding tools.
• Bonus: Distributed systems and data pipeline engineering. Time‑series observability stacks (Prometheus, Thanos, VictoriaMetrics). API design and versioning at scale. Workflow and orchestration engines (Temporal, Cadence). BMC/Redfish or hardware telemetry. Go, Python, and Postgres.

Salary & Benefits

• Competitive total compensation package (salary + equity).
• Retirement or pension plan, in line with local norms.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Generous PTO policy, in line with local norms.

The base salary range for this position is $175,000 - $300,000 per year, depending on experience, skills, qualifications, and location. This range represents our good faith estimate of the compensation for this role at the time of posting. Total compensation may also include equity in the form of stock options.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.