Production Engineer

Placer.ai; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 190,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Competitive salary

Excellent benefits

Equity awards (for certain roles)

Job summary

Placer.ai is seeking a Production Engineer to own the infrastructure behind one of the world's largest location analytics platforms, spanning CI/CD pipelines, cloud environments, developer tooling, and observability. This is hands-on, end-to-end ownership at the intersection of scale, reliability, and engineering velocity.

Responsibilities include end-to-end management of multi-cluster GKE, Terraform via Atlantis, and ArgoCD GitOps; driving CI/CD reliability; maintaining production and

Qualifications

• 5+ years in a Production Engineering, SRE, or Platform Engineering role at a SaaS product company.
• 3+ years of hands-on Kubernetes in production and operating at scale.
• 2+ years of IaC tooling (Terraform, Pulumi or equivalent) at real scale.
• Experience managing production databases and queues (PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka or similar).
• Proficiency in at least one general-purpose language (Python, Go or Ruby).
• Strong monitoring and alerting fundamentals with proactive reliability engineering.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve Placer's infrastructure end-to-end - multi-cluster GKE, Terraform via Atlantis, ArgoCD GitOps.
• Drive CI/CD pipeline reliability and developer tooling to increase release velocity.
• Manage production and development environments across multiple workloads with high availability.
• Build and maintain observability systems - dashboards, alerts, and incident response.
• Identify and resolve performance, scalability, and reliability bottlenecks before incidents.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to shape infrastructure decisions from design through deployment.
• Introduce new tools, standards, and frameworks - define the approach, not just execution.

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Pulumi

ArgoCD

PostgreSQL

Redis

Kafka

Python

Go

Ruby

Job description

ABOUT PLACER.AI

One of the fastest growing tech companies in North America, Placer.ai (“Placer”) reached $100 million ARR “Centaur” status in 2024, within 6 years of launching the Placer platform. We previously crossed the $1B valuation “Unicorn” threshold in 2022. Our A.I.-based SaaS platform transforms how leaders make critical decisions by unlocking unparalleled visibility into markets and locations, creating a blue ocean market of more than $100B. And the best part is, we accomplished this by leading a privacy‑first business in which data has been stripped of user identifiers and only aggregated information is provided within the platform. Our platform provides instant visibility into almost any location in the U.S. We have grown exponentially over the past 6 years, counting more than 4,000+ paying customers including many Fortune 500 companies, such as, JP Morgan Chase, Wayfair, Google and many more. Named one of Forbes America’s Best Startup Employers and a Deloitte Technology Fast company, we are proud of our collaborative, innovative and inclusive culture.

Summary

We're looking for a Production Engineer to own the infrastructure behind one of the world's largest location analytics platforms - from CI/CD pipelines and cloud environments to developer tooling and observability. This is a hands‑on, end-to-end ownership role at the intersection of scale, reliability, and engineering velocity.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve Placer's GCP infrastructure end-to-end - multi-cluster GKE, Terraform via Atlantis, ArgoCD GitOps


• Drive CI/CD pipeline reliability and developer tooling - reduce friction, increase release velocity


• Manage production and development environments across multiple workloads with high availability requirements


• Build and maintain observability systems - dashboards, alerting, and incident response that keep the team ahead of failures


• Identify and resolve performance, scalability, and reliability bottlenecks before they become incidents


• Collaborate directly with engineering teams to shape infrastructure decisions from design through deployment


• Introduce new tools, standards, and frameworks - you define the approach, not just execute it

Requirements

• 5+ years in a Production Engineering, SRE, or Platform Engineering role at a SaaS product company


• 3+ years of hands‑on Kubernetes in production - not just deployment, but operating and scaling it


• 2+ years with IaC tools - Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent at real scale


• Experience managing production databases and queues - PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, or similar


• Proficiency in at least one general-purpose language - Python, Go, or Ruby


• Strong monitoring and alerting fundamentals - you build the systems that catch problems before users do

Nice to have

• GCP experience - this is our primary cloud


• CKA certification or deep Kubernetes ecosystem knowledge - CNIs, service meshes, operators, ingresses


• Experience with RabbitMQ or Kafka at scale


• Familiarity with GitOps workflows - ArgoCD or equivalent

WHY JOIN PLACER.AI?

• Join a rocketship! We are pioneers of a new market that we are creating


• Take a central and critical role at Placer.ai


• Work with, and learn from, top‑notch talent


• Competitive salary


• Excellent benefits


• Hybrid

The U.S. annualized pay range for this position is $190,000 - $210,000 USD. In addition, certain roles have the opportunity to earn sales‑based commissions. Base pay offered within the stated range may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including job‑related skills, professional experience, education and licenses (if applicable), work location and compensation market data. Base pay is just a part of our total rewards program.

Placer provides medical, dental and vision coverage as well as flexible time off, 401K and equity awards for certain roles.

NOTEWORTHY LINKS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PLACER

• Placer.ai in a nutshell


• Placer.ai's recent $100M round C funding (unicorn valuation!)


• Placer.ai's data


• Placer.ai in the news


• COVID-19 Economic Recovery Dashboard

Placer.ai is committed to maintaining a drug‑free workplace and promoting a safe, healthy working environment for all employees. Placer.ai is an equal opportunity employer and has a global remote workforce. Placer.ai’s applicants are considered solely based on their qualifications, without regard to an applicant’s disability or need for accommodation. Any Placer.ai applicant who requires reasonable accommodations during the application process should contact Placer.ai’s Human Resources Department to make the need for an accommodation known.