Senior Software Engineer

UpBound; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Upbound is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help build and operate Upbound Spaces, the core control-plane platform behind the Upbound Platform. You will work on multi-tenant SaaS environments, writing Go code that interfaces with the Kubernetes API and shaping production reliability across cloud and on-prem installations.

You will own features in high demand, debug complex issues in distributed systems, and contribute to design docs and runbooks that promote robust, observable services.

Qualifications

• Experience operating production cloud services at scale.
• Strong debugging skills in distributed systems and observability tools.
• Proven ability to build and operate controllers interacting with the Kubernetes API.

Responsibilities

• Actively build and operate Upbound Spaces in production across multi-tenant SaaS environments.
• Take ownership of features in high demand and deliver new functionality.
• Investigate and debug complex issues in customer environments and multi-control plane scenarios.
• Contribute to design docs and post-incident reviews for reliability improvements.
• Support lifecycle of highly scalable services from discovery to production-readiness.
• Write Go code interfacing with Kubernetes API (operators, controllers, add-ons).
• Deploy, manage, and troubleshoot Kubernetes services in production using metrics and logs.
• Create tooling for debugging customer environments and automating incident response.
• Author docs, runbooks, and blogs to support new features.
• Participate in on-call rotations for Upbound Cloud.

Skills

Go

Distributed systems

Customer collaboration

Tools

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We're the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane , and we're building the Intelligent Control Plane -a new platform layer that makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable . Our mission is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale-so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents . We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence. Today, Upbound supports Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across 100+ countries . Crossplane has surpassed 100M+ downloads and is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide . We're a Series B company backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital , and we've raised $69M to date. Learn more at upbound.io Upbound is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help us build and operate Upbound Spaces, the multiple control plane management software at the heart of the Upbound Platform. As part of the Spaces team, you will help us scale Upbound to reliably support thousands of control planes, while also extending enterprise control plane management and operations both in the cloud and on premises. Our team is expanding, and this is the perfect opportunity for you to make a significant engineering impact in both development and production operations.

What You'll Do

Actively build and operate Upbound Spaces in production, troubleshooting and resolving issues across multi-tenant SaaS environments, as well as contributing to Upbound's open-source projects, including Crossplane.

Take ownership of building features in high demand by Upbound's customers and deliver new functionality that will delight and amaze our users.

Investigate and debug complex issues in customer environments, including multi-control plane scenarios, resource reconciliation problems, and performance bottlenecks.

Communicate through thoughtful and thorough design documents for new initiatives and detailed post-incident reviews that drive system improvements.

Support the full project lifecycle for highly scalable and reliable services running in a cloud environment - discovery, analysis, architecture, design, review, documentation, building, migration, automation, deployment, production-readiness, and ongoing operational support.

Write and maintain Go code that interfaces with the Kubernetes API, such as operators, controllers, add-ons, etc., with a focus on observability, debuggability, and operational excellence.

Deploy, manage, and troubleshoot our Kubernetes services in production, using metrics, logs, and traces to identify and resolve issues quickly.

Build and maintain operational tooling for debugging customer environments, analyzing control plane health, and automating incident response.

Author documentation, user guides, runbooks, and blog posts to support and promote new features that you release.

Support the software release cycle for Spaces self-hosted distributions, including diagnosing issues in customer-managed deployments.

Participate in on-call rotation to support Upbound Cloud, responding to incidents and driving them to resolution.

What You'll Bring

Have experience operating production cloud services at scale: monitoring, alerting, incident response, post-mortems, and continuous improvement of service reliability.

Have strong debugging skills across distributed systems, including experience with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing) and techniques for diagnosing issues in production environments.

Have experience building and operating controllers that interact with the Kubernetes API server, including troubleshooting reconciliation loops, managing API rate limits, and optimizing controller performance.

Are comfortable working directly with customers to understand, reproduce, and resolve complex technical issues in their environments.

Take responsibility and ownership for solving problems even if they are outside your lane, especially during incidents affecting customer workloads.

Demonstrate excellence in your work, constantly trying to improve your skills and the operational posture of the systems you build.

Have empathy for customers and keep them in mind as you build solutions, understanding that reliability and debuggability are features.

Realize the importance of clear communication and effective collaboration to work as a team, deliver great results, and support customers through technical challenges.

Help create a safe environment where everyone can contribute, learn from failures, share on-call knowledge, and help each other grow as operators and engineers.

Why Upbound?

At Upbound, you'll help shape the systems and