Senior Software Engineer - Kubernetes / Distributed Systems

Buoyant; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Buoyant, the company behind Linkerd, CNCF-graduated service mesh for Kubernetes, is a small, fully remote engineering team building a new cloud-native infrastructure product.

We are looking for a senior, self-directed engineer who has built production infrastructure software and is comfortable working deep in the Kubernetes ecosystem, with architectural ownership on a small team.

Qualifications

• Experience building production infrastructure software in a Kubernetes-centric environment.
• Strong knowledge of Kubernetes APIs, controllers/operators, and CRDs.
• Experience with reconciliation loops and distributed systems/control-plane engineering.
• Proficiency in Go and/or Rust, plus gRPC.
• Networking, service mesh, security, and identity considerations in cloud infra.
• Ability to own architectural decisions in a small team.

Responsibilities

• Hands-on engineering with significant architectural ownership on a small team.
• Develop and maintain Kubernetes-centric distributed systems and cloud infrastructure.
• Collaborate across the platform to design scalable APIs and controllers.

Skills

Kubernetes APIs

Controllers/Operators

CRDs

Reconciliation systems

Distributed systems

Go

Rust

gRPC

Networking

Service mesh

Security

Identity

Cloud infrastructure

Tools

Kubernetes

Go

Rust

gRPC

Job description

Senior Software Engineer - Kubernetes / Distributed Systems | Full-time

Buoyant is the company behind Linkerd, the CNCF-graduated service mesh for Kubernetes. We're a small, fully remote engineering team building a new cloud-native infrastructure product.

We're looking for a senior, self-directed engineer who has built production infrastructure software and is comfortable working deep in the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Relevant experience may include:

• Kubernetes APIs
• controllers/operators
• CRDs
• reconciliation systems
• distributed systems/control-plane engineering
• Go and/or Rust
• gRPC
• networking
• service mesh
• security
• identity
• other cloud infrastructure

This is a hands-on role with significant architectural ownership on a small engineering team.

Location: Remote - US, Canada, South America, or Europe with Central European Time-compatible working hours.