Senior Software Engineer

Upbound - Job Posting; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Upbound is seeking an experienced engineer to run production cloud services at scale, focusing on reliability, observability, and incident response. You will operate Kubernetes controllers, implement monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry, and collaborate closely with customers to reproduce and fix complex issues.

In this remote role, you will own high‑priority features, contribute to Crossplane open‑source work, and help standardize runbooks and post‑incident reviews.

Qualifications

• Proven experience running production cloud services at scale.
• Strong troubleshooting ability in distributed systems with observability tooling.
• Hands-on experience with Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry and distributed tracing.
• Experience building and operating Kubernetes controllers with API server interactions.
• Comfort working directly with customers to reproduce and fix complex issues.
• Demonstrated ownership for solving problems during incidents affecting workloads.
• Commitment to high-quality work and improving operational resilience.
• Customer empathy and focus on debuggability as a product feature.
• Clear communication and collaboration to support customers and team.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate Upbound Spaces in production across multi-tenant SaaS environments.
• Own high-priority features requested by customers and deliver new capabilities.
• Investigate and debug complex customer-side issues, including multi-control-plane scenarios.
• Produce thoughtful design documents for new initiatives and post-incident reviews.
• Support the full lifecycle of scalable cloud services from discovery to operations.
• Write Go code interfacing with the Kubernetes API with emphasis on observability and reliability.
• Deploy, manage, and troubleshoot Kubernetes services in production using metrics, logs, and traces.
• Build and maintain tooling for customer debugging, control plane health analysis, and incident-response automation.
• Create documentation, runbooks, and blog posts to support shipped features.
• Support release processes for self-hosted Spaces distributions and diagnose issues in customer environments.
• Participate in an on-call rotation for Upbound Cloud and resolve incidents end-to-end.

Skills

Production cloud ops

Troubleshooting distributed systems

Observability tools

Kubernetes controllers

Customer focus

Ownership & accountability

Quality & reliability

Communication & collaboration

Team-oriented mindset

Tools

Kubernetes

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

Requirements

Must have

• We want proven experience running production cloud services at scale, including monitoring, alerting, incident response, post-incident reviews, and ongoing reliability improvements.
• We are looking for strong troubleshooting ability in distributed systems, with hands‑on experience using observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and distributed tracing.
• We need experience building and operating Kubernetes controllers that work with the API server, including resolving reconciliation issues, handling API rate limits, and improving controller efficiency.
• We value comfort in working directly with customers to understand, reproduce, and fix complex technical problems in their environments.
• We expect ownership and accountability for solving problems beyond your immediate scope, especially during incidents that affect customer workloads.
• We look for a commitment to high‑quality work and a continuous drive to strengthen your skills and the operational resilience of the systems you build.
• We seek customer empathy, with an understanding that reliability and debuggability are core product features.
• We need clear communication and strong collaboration skills to work effectively as a team and support customers through technical challenges.
• We value a team‑oriented mindset that helps create a safe environment where people can contribute, learn from failures, share on‑call knowledge, and grow as engineers and operators.

Responsibilities

• We will have you build and operate Upbound Spaces in production, resolving issues across multi‑tenant SaaS environments and contributing to our open‑source work, including Crossplane.
• We will ask you to own high‑priority features requested by our customers and deliver new capabilities that improve their experience.
• We will have you investigate and debug complex customer‑side issues, including multi‑control‑plane scenarios, reconciliation failures, and performance constraints.
• We will expect you to produce thoughtful design documents for new initiatives and detailed post‑incident reviews that inform future improvements.
• We will have you support the full lifecycle of highly scalable, reliable cloud services, from discovery and architecture through deployment and ongoing operations.
• We will rely on you to write and maintain Go code that interfaces with the Kubernetes API, with an emphasis on observability, debuggability, and operational excellence.
• We will have you deploy, manage, and troubleshoot our Kubernetes services in production using metrics, logs, and traces.
• We will ask you to build and maintain operational tooling for customer debugging, control plane health analysis, and incident‑response automation.
• We will have you create documentation, user guides, runbooks, and blog posts that support and promote the features you ship.
• We will expect you to support the release process for our self‑hosted Spaces distributions, including diagnosing issues in customer‑managed environments.
• We will have you participate in an on‑call rotation for Upbound Cloud and help resolve incidents end to end.

Company

We are Upbound, the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane, and we are redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. Our Intelligent Control Plane platform makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable so teams can provision, operate, and adapt at scale for both humans and AI agents. We support Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers in more than 100 countries, with Crossplane surpassing 100 million downloads and adoption by over 1,000 teams worldwide. We are a Series B company backed by GV, Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, with $69M raised to date. This role is remote (#LI-REMOTE) and offers the chance to make a major engineering impact across development and production operations while helping shape the future of our platform.