Member of Technical Staff, Infrastructure Engineer

Vapi; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 280,000 - 314,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Base salary + equity

Comprehensive health coverage

Quarterly off-sites

Flexible time off

L&D budget

Job summary

Vapi in San Francisco is seeking a senior/staff software engineer specializing in SRE and production engineering to strengthen reliability for our real-time voice platform. You will build tooling, improve observability, and turn incidents into durable engineering improvements.

Join a small, focused infra team and own critical reliability surface with latency-sensitive systems at scale. This role is based in San Francisco and requires deep experience with Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and

Qualifications

• Senior or staff-level software engineer with SRE/production engineering or infrastructure experience in distributed systems.
• Experience writing production-quality software and building reliability tooling or automation.
• Deep experience with observability, incident response, failure analysis, capacity planning, and reliability practices.

Responsibilities

• Own a reliability workstream across observability, incident response, capacity, performance, or automation.
• Reduce manual work and improve detection, understanding, and response to failures.
• Deliver durable improvements to failure prevention or recovery and plan next reliability investments.

Skills

SRE

Production engineering

Observability

Incident response

Kubernetes

Cloud infrastructure

Failure analysis

Tools

Envoy

Postgres

Redis

Kafka

Aurora

ClickHouse

Job description

Vapi (/ˈVɑːpi/):

• Voice AI that resolves, not transfers

• Powering 1 billion calls for companies like Amazon Ring, Intuit, ServiceTitan, and New York Life

• Trusted by 1 million developers building the future of voice agents

• Backed by Peak XV, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, M12, Y Combinator, and more with $72M raised

• Try talking to Vapi now!

Vapi (/ˈVɑːpi/):

• Voice AI that resolves, not transfers

• Powering 1 billion calls for companies like Amazon Ring, Intuit, ServiceTitan, and New York Life

• Trusted by 1 million developers building the future of voice agents

• Backed by Peak XV, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, M12, Y Combinator, and more with $72M raised

• Try talking to Vapi now!

Why this Role:

• Vapi’s real-time voice platform depends on core infrastructure across compute, storage, networking, and telephony. As usage grows, reliability has to be designed into the systems our customers depend on.

• We’re adding a dedicated SRE profile to our five-person Infrastructure team. We need a software-first engineer who can build tooling and automation, improve observability, and turn operational lessons into lasting engineering improvements.

• This role has a distinct focus from our broader Infrastructure Engineer role because it requires deep reliability and operability judgment. You’ll join a calibrated team and work on latency-sensitive systems at meaningful scale. This role is based in San Francisco.

What You’ll Do:

• 30 Days: Learn Vapi’s architecture, production environment, incident history, and reliability practices. Build context with the Infrastructure and product engineering teams, then contribute an initial operational or reliability improvement.

• 60 Days: Own a reliability workstream across observability, incident response, capacity, performance, or production automation. Reduce manual work and improve how the team detects, understands, and responds to failures.

• 90 Days: Become the go-to owner for a meaningful part of Vapi’s reliability surface. Deliver a durable improvement to failure prevention or recovery, and propose a roadmap for the next reliability investments.

Who You Are:

• You are a senior or staff-level software engineer with meaningful SRE, production engineering, or infrastructure experience in distributed systems.

• You write production-quality software and have built reliability tooling or automation yourself, rather than relying only on operational process.

• You have deep experience with observability, incident response, failure analysis, capacity, and the practices that keep production systems healthy.

• You are comfortable with Kubernetes, networking, and cloud infrastructure, and you can debug across application and infrastructure boundaries.

• You reason clearly about failure modes and can balance reliability investments with product and engineering velocity.

• Experience with real-time networking or telephony, Envoy, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, Aurora, ClickHouse, or a Google-style SRE environment is a strong plus.

How We Work:

• Build something worthy of love

  • Craft matters. We aim to build products and experiences customers genuinely love, not just tolerate.

• Commit and follow through

  • We finish what we start and build trust by being people others can count on.

• Why not today?

  • We value urgency and momentum. The fastest path to customer value usually wins.

• Seek raw input

  • We go directly to customers, data, and teammates instead of relying on summaries or assumptions.

• It’s our problem

  • We operate as one team. We share credit, own mistakes together, and support each other when things get hard.

• Be direct and kind

  • We give feedback clearly, respectfully, and without delay.

Why Vapi:

• Generational impact: Build the human interface for every business

• Ownership culture: 70% of the company are previous founders

• Kind team: The founders, Jordan and Nikhil, are Canadians

• Tier-1 Investors: YC, KP seed, Bessemer Series A

What We Offer:

• Real stake: We offer a base salary of $280,000 to $314,000 and excellent equity ownership

• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision plans

• Team love: We love hanging out, and we do quarterly off-sites

• Flexible time off: take what you need

• More: catered meals, transportation, gym, and a $10k annual L&D budget