Software Engineer III - Core Platform Infrastructure Software

Frontdoor Defense; Seattle (WA); Híbrido; USD 140.000 - 230.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Blue Origin in Seattle, WA, seeks a Software Engineer III to own and improve the platform infrastructure, focusing on Kubernetes clusters, paved-road templates, and reusable CI/CD pipelines. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to raise reliability, security, and velocity while building scalable, self‑service tooling.

You’ll contribute to Terraform modules, Kustomize configurations, and GitLab templates, shaping the internal platform used across engineering teams.

Formación

• 5+ years of professional experience across software development, infrastructure engineering, and production operations.
• Hands‑on experience operating and administering Kubernetes clusters in production — including cluster lifecycle and upgrades, RBAC and multi‑tenancy, cluster networking, add‑ons and controllers, and resource/quota management.
• Experience with GitOps‑based delivery (e.g., Flux or Argo CD) and policy‑as-code enforcement (e.g., Kyverno or OPA/Gatekeeper).
• Experience authoring reusable infrastructure as a product — Terraform modules, Kustomize configurations, and CI/CD pipeline templates that other teams consume.
• Hands‑on experience with AWS and cloud‑native infrastructure, including core networking (VPC, subnets, security groups).

Responsabilidades

• Cluster & Paved-Road Engineering
• Reliability & Operations
• Automation & Developer Experience
• Engineering Excellence
• Collaboration & Growth

Conocimientos

Go

Java

JavaScript

Python

Herramientas

Terraform modules

Kustomize

Flux

Kyverno

OPA/Gatekeeper

Argo CD

GitLab templates

Descripción del empleo

Software Engineer III - Core Platform Infrastructure

Own and improve the platform's Kubernetes clusters and paved-road templates to enable rapid, safe deployments

Location: Seattle, Washington

About The Role

Software Engineer III - Platform Infrastructure

At Blue Origin, we envision millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. We're working to develop reusable, safe, and low-cost space vehicles and systems within a culture of safety, collaboration, and inclusion. Join our team of problem solvers as we add new chapters to the history of spaceflight!

This role is part of Enterprise Technology (ET), where we're developing the digital infrastructure needed to build the road to space, with an emphasis on digital capabilities required to advance Blue Origin's mission. Enterprise Technology is the center of excellence for digital technology at Blue Origin, providing oversight and governance to align technology and business strategies.

About the Role

We're a diverse team of collaborators, doers, and problem-solvers relentlessly committed to a culture of safety and innovation. This position will directly impact the history of space exploration and requires your dedication and keen attention to ensure safe and repeatable spaceflight. Join us in lowering the cost of access to space, fulfilling Blue Origin's vision of millions living and working in space to benefit Earth.

This is a platform infrastructure role — you'll build and operate the thing that builds the thing.

We are looking for a skilled and motivated Software Engineer III to join our Platform Infrastructure team. We own and operate the Kubernetes clusters that the rest of the company deploys onto, and we build the paved road that gets teams there — reusable Kustomize configurations, GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates, and Terraform modules that other teams adopt to build, ship, and run their own services. We don't own those services; we own the cluster underneath them and the templates and guardrails that make deploying to it fast, consistent, and safe.

You'll join a high-impact team whose customers are other engineering teams across Blue Origin — the leverage is enormous, because every improvement to a template or cluster capability multiplies across everyone who builds on it. At Blue Origin we rely heavily on Kubernetes for rapid software development and deployment; a candidate for this role needs deep, hands‑on experience running Kubernetes clusters in production — operating the platform itself, not just deploying onto it. If you're passionate about building resilient, self‑service infrastructure and paved‑road tooling — and want your work to matter — this is your team.

How We Build

We build with an AI‑assisted mindset — using tools like Claude Code, Codex, and other leading AI assistants to move faster, think bigger, and tackle harder problems. AI is a first‑class part of how we design, automate, debug, and review here — not an afterthought. You'll be expected to adopt, evaluate, and advocate for AI tooling responsibly, with a clear eye on production reliability, security, and governance. The best engineers on our team don't just use AI — they know when to trust it, when to question it, and when to override it.

Platform Scale & Impact

The clusters we operate and the templates we publish underpin how software is built, shipped, and run across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and mission operations. When we improve a pipeline template or a cluster capability, that improvement lands for every team that builds on it. We're continuously raising the bar on the paved road: reusable delivery pipelines, resilient container platforms, and observability that teams inherit by default. At this scale, reliability and scalability aren't aspirational — they're the baseline. The infrastructure you help build directly determines how fast Blue Origin moves.

What You'll Work With

• Languages: Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python
• Cloud: AWS and cloud-native services
• Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes, containerd, Docker, Kustomize
• Infrastructure as Code & GitOps: Terraform modules, Flux
• Policy & Cluster Security: Kyverno policy-as-code, RBAC, network policy
• CI/CD: GitLab pipeline templates and delivery automation
• Observability: Datadog — metrics, centralized logging, distributed tracing, dashboards, alerting
• Networking: Kubernetes networking (CNI, ingress, DNS); AWS VPC fundamentals
• Operating Systems: Linux
• AI Tools: Claude Code, Codex, and equivalent AI-assisted development tools
• Source Control & Collaboration: Git, code reviews, design reviews

Key Responsibilities

• Cluster & Paved-Road Engineering
• Reliability & Operations
• Automation & Developer Experience
• Engineering Excellence
• Collaboration & Growth

  Required Qualifications

  • 5+ years of professional experience across software development, infrastructure engineering, and production operations.
  • Hands‑on experience operating and administering Kubernetes clusters in production — not merely deploying workloads onto them — including cluster lifecycle and upgrades, node and control‑plane management, RBAC and multi‑tenancy, cluster networking (CNI, ingress, DNS, network policy), add‑ons and controllers, and resource/quota management.
  • Experience with GitOps‑based delivery (e.g., Flux or Argo CD) and policy-as-code enforcement (e.g., Kyverno or OPA/Gatekeeper).
  • Experience authoring reusable infrastructure as a product — Terraform modules, Kustomize configurations, and CI/CD pipeline templates that other teams consume — with versioning and backward compatibility in mind.
  • Hands‑on experience with AWS and cloud-native infrastructure, including core networking (VPC, subnets, security groups).
  • Experience analyzing and troubleshooting distributed systems.
  • Experience running production systems on‑call — incident response, blameless postmortems, and observability (metrics, logging, and distributed tracing).
  • Strong proficiency in at least one general-purpose language (e.g., Go, Python, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, or.NET), and openness to learning the languages we use day to day (Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python).
  • Familiarity with, or willingness to adopt, AI‑assisted development tools — with sound judgment about when to trust, question, or override what they produce.
  • Strong communication skills — you can articulate complex technical concepts clearly, engage constructively in design discussions, and own outcomes.
  • Ability to earn trust, maintain positive and professional relationships, and contribute to a culture of inclusion.
  • Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

  Desired Qualifications

  • Multi-cluster, or multi‑account / multi‑environment, operations at scale.
  • Experience with a service mesh such as Istio — traffic management, mTLS, and observability at the mesh layer.
  • A demonstrated habit of using AI‑assisted tools in your workflow, and judgment evaluating AI-generated code and configuration for correctness, security, and production readiness.
  • A habit of sharing knowledge through code reviews, design discussions, and pairing.
  • Experience in aerospace, manufacturing, or supply chain domains is a plus but not required.

  What Success Looks Like

  In your first 3–6 months, you will:

  • Ramp up on our clusters and paved‑road tooling — shipping a reviewed template or module change and taking primary on‑call with support.
  • Independently deliver meaningful automation and reliability improvements with measurable impact on velocity or uptime.
  • Participate in on‑call rotations and demonstrate reliability ownership.
  • Contribute constructively to design and code reviews across the team.

  In your first 6–12 months, you will:

  • Own one or more areas of the cluster or the template suite end‑to‑end — from design decisions through production operation and the experience of the teams who consume it.
  • Drive improvements in reliability, scalability, or developer experience that benefit teams across the company.
  • Establish yourself as a trusted technical voice in team discussions and cross‑functional collaborations.
  • Share your knowledge back with the team — through reviews, documentation, and engineering standards — while continuing to grow.

  Why Join Platform Infrastructure

  This is an opportunity to:

  • Work at