Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer — TS Cleared,Govt-Ready

Maven Ventures; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 440,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage

401(k) retirement plan

Short & long-term disability insurance

Life insurance

Job summary

Pantera Capital is looking for a Senior Infrastructure Engineer to join the US Government Team in Palo Alto, CA. This role involves designing and operating secure infrastructure for critical government projects. The ideal candidate should have strong Kubernetes expertise and active Top Secret security clearance.

The position offers a compensation range of $180,000 - $440,000 USD, comprehensive benefits, and potential for equity. Up to 50% travel is required.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as an Infrastructure Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, or similar role.
• Active Top Secret (TS) security clearance required.
• Proficiency in managing storage infrastructure using IaC tools.
• Deep understanding of the Kubernetes stack and related components.

Responsibilities

• Develop and optimize software for infrastructure provisioning across various environments.
• Enhance reliability and performance for AI workloads in secure settings.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to meet government-specific needs.

Skills

Kubernetes expertise

IaC tools (Pulumi, Terraform, Ansible)

Communication skills

Incident management

Job description

SpaceXAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge. Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity. We operate with a flat organizational structure. All employees are expected to be hands-on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission. Leadership is given to those who show initiative and consistently deliver excellence. Work ethic and strong prioritization skills are important. All employees are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Infrastructure Engineer to join our US Government Team, focused on designing, building, and operating secure, scalable infrastructure for critical government projects. In this role, you will develop and manage training and inference clusters, as well as highly reliable applications, across bare metal, classified cloud, and hybrid cloud architectures. You will leverage your expertise in Kubernetes and GPU hardware to deliver robust, secure systems that support large-scale AI workloads while meeting stringent federal compliance requirements. This role demands a passion for automation, observability, and ensuring system integrity in a fast-paced, high-security environment.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop and optimize software to provision and manage SpaceXAI's infrastructure across on-premise, virtual machine, and classified cloud environments, enabling efficient scaling for US government initiatives.
• Enhance the reliability, performance, and cost-effectiveness of infrastructure to support large-scale AI and application workloads in secure, classified settings.
• Collaborate with SpaceXAI engineers to understand workload requirements and design tailored solutions that meet government-specific needs and compliance standards.
• Implement robust observability, monitoring, and security practices to ensure the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of critical systems, adhering to federal protocols.
• Manage storage infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools such as Pulumi, Terraform, or Ansible, with a focus on secure data handling.
• Drive system reliability through incident management, postmortems, and the definition of clear SLAs and SLOs, while maintaining security and compliance.
• This is an in-person role based in Palo Alto, CA or Washington, DC, with up to 50% travel required.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Active Top Secret (TS) security clearance.
• 5+ years of experience as an Infrastructure Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, or similar role, with a focus on building and maintaining reliable, scalable systems, preferably in secure or government environments.
• Proficiency in managing storage infrastructure with IaC tools such as Pulumi, Terraform, or Ansible.
• Deep understanding of the Kubernetes stack, including CNI, CRI, CSI, and related components.
• Demonstrated ability to improve system reliability through incident management, postmortems, and defining SLAs/SLOs.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills, with the ability to handle sensitive information concisely and accurately.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Deep familiarity with installing and using GPU hardware, including setting up drivers, debugging issues, and ensuring reliability.
• Experience with high-traffic web or mobile application workloads, including optimizing Kubernetes for large-scale deployments in classified or federal settings.
• Familiarity with chaos engineering, capacity planning, or similar practices for ensuring system resilience in government projects.
• Proficiency with tools such as Kyverno, ArgoCD, or Go programming for infrastructure automation.
• Strong sense of ownership, curiosity, and enthusiasm for tackling complex technical challenges in secure environments.
• Passion for problem-solving and a proactive drive to deliver impactful results while adhering to security protocols.
• Certifications in security-related fields (e.g., CISSP) or experience in secure federal environments.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at SpaceXAI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.

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