Senior Platform Engineer

CloudZero, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

CloudZero is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to own Kafka operations, Kubernetes environments, and cloud infrastructure. You’ll drive reliability, performance, and developer experience, with autonomy to shape our platform as we scale.

You’ll focus on optimizing Kafka and EKS, implement GitOps and CI/CD pipelines, and collaborate with engineering teams to build scalable, resilient systems. On-call readiness is required for incident response.

Qualifications

• Production Kafka experience with high-throughput systems.
• Experience running containerized workloads in production with Kubernetes environments (EKS/GKE/AKS or self-hosted).
• Familiarity with core cloud concepts; AWS and other clouds (GCP, Azure) acceptable.
• Strong IaC experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar tools.
• Ability to write automation in Python, Go, Node, or Bash.
• Some experience with GitHub Actions and GitOps workflows.

Responsibilities

• Lead operations and reliability of Kafka platform, define SLOs for availability and latency.
• Administer and optimize Amazon EKS environments, cluster scaling and namespace provisioning.
• Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting for Kafka and Kubernetes with Sum o Logic.
• Collaborate with software teams to design reliable, scalable applications on Kubernetes and Kafka.
• Manage cloud environments using IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi) integrated with GitHub Actions.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and deployments with GitHub Actions; ensure version control and automation.
• Provide on-call support and incident response.

Skills

Kafka ops

Kubernetes/EKS

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Terraform/ IaC

GitHub Actions

Python/Go/Node/Bash

GitOps practices

On-call experience

Tools

Amazon EKS

Terraform

CloudFormation

Pulumi

Sumo Logic

Job description

About the Role

CloudZero is growing fast. Our customer base is expanding, the data challenges we're solving are getting more complex, and the platform is scaling to match. As we look to the next evolution of CloudZero's infrastructure, we're looking for a Senior Platform Engineer who can help shape what comes next.

You’ll own our core messaging and container orchestration platforms, bringing deep technical expertise to decisions that will shape how we build, scale, and operate our infrastructure. You’ll have the autonomy to identify opportunities, determine the right solutions, and drive improvements in reliability, performance, and developer experience. Rather than simply maintaining what exists today, you’ll help define the foundations our engineering organization will rely on as we continue to grow.

In this role, you’ll lead the operations, scaling, and tuning of our Kafka clusters and Kubernetes environments. Because we leverage Amazon EKS, you won’t be bogged down with from-scratch control plane management. Instead, you’ll focus on optimizing performance, implementing GitOps best practices, and empowering our engineering teams to ship code and process data seamlessly.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the operations and reliability of our Kafka platform, including deployment, scaling, and topic governance, and define the SLOs for availability and latency

• Administer and optimize our Amazon EKS environments, handling cluster scaling, node group management, namespace provisioning, and overall container resilience

• Implement comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting for both Kafka and Kubernetes using Sumo Logic to catch bottlenecks before they impact the business

• Partner closely with software engineering teams to help them design reliable, scalable applications that effectively leverage Kubernetes and Kafka

• Manage our cloud environments using Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi) integrated seamlessly with our GitHub Actions workflows

• Build and maintain our CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure deployments using GitHub Actions, ensuring all configuration changes are version-controlled, automated, and predictable

• On call experience

What You Bring

• Production Kafka experience, with a deep understanding of Kafka architecture, broker configuration, topic management, replication, and troubleshooting in high-throughput environments

• A proven track record running containerized workloads in production. Strong experience with any Kubernetes environment is great, whether that’s EKS, GKE, AKS, or self-hosted

• Familiarity with core cloud infrastructure concepts (compute, networking, IAM). While we operate on AWS, strong experience with any major cloud provider (GCP, Azure, etc.) is perfectly fine

• Solid experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar Infrastructure as Code tools to manage infrastructure predictably

• Ability to write automation and tooling in Python, Go, or Node, and Bash

• Some experience designing and operating GitOps workflows using GitHub Actions or something similar

Nice to Have

• Experience with Kafka ecosystem tools (Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, ksqlDB)

• Experience writing custom GitHub Actions or composite actions

• Experience running stateful workloads and data infrastructure on Kubernetes

• Passion for Developer Experience (DevEx) and optimizing CI/CD workflows to improve engineering velocity

About CloudZero
CloudZero is the AI ROI Company. We built the financial control plane for AI: the system finance, IT, and engineering use to connect every AI dollar to the outcome it produced. Across every provider. In real time.
AI spend is the fastest-growing line on enterprise P&Ls and the least understood. Only 14% of CFOs can prove AI ROI today. CloudZero answers the question no one else can: what did it cost to produce this outcome, for this customer, on this model.
The largest cloud spenders on the planet already run on CloudZero, including Coinbase, Duolingo, DoorDash, and Shutterstock. We processed 14 trillion billing events in the last twelve months. We're the first listed partner on Anthropic's cost and usage API. We've raised over $119 million, including a $56 million Series C backed by leading venture capital firms.

Why Join Our Team?
At CloudZero, you’ll find a collaborative, fast-moving environment where your work makes a direct impact. We’re a team that values ownership, creativity, and curiosity — and we’re tackling some of the most complex challenges in the cloud space. If you’re excited by working with cutting‑edge technology, driving meaningful outcomes, and growing with a company that’s scaling fast, we’d love to hear from you!