Software Engineer, Systems

Keycard; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-First

Equity

Health benefits

4 weeks vacation

MacBook Pro stipend

Job summary

Keycard, a remote-first startup focused on identity and access infrastructure, is hiring a Staff Platform Engineer to build core systems and infrastructure that power its agent-native platform. You’ll work on identity services, enforcement paths, developer platforms, and automation ensuring deterministic delivery, consistency, and availability at global scale.

You’ll move across the stack, from Kubernetes operators to core product services, collaborating with founders, product, design, and

Qualifications

• Experience building developer-facing platforms (Kubernetes operators, CI/CD tooling) and core services.
• Strong distributed systems instincts with secure, resilient design.
• Experience shipping in 0-1 environments and making hard trade-offs to enable faster iteration.

Responsibilities

• Build core systems and infrastructure powering Keycard.
• Develop identity services, enforcement paths, and automation for the platform.
• Create Kubernetes operators and CI/CD automation across the stack.
• Collaborate with founders, product, design, and SDK/core services teams to ship with confidence.

Skills

Go

Rust

Kubernetes operators

CI/CD tooling

Distributed systems

Observability

Developer platforms

Tools

Kubernetes

eBPF

WASM

Job description

About Keycard

At Keycard, we’re building

About Keycard

At Keycard, we’re building identity & access infrastructure for the agent-native era - where software isn’t static, but a dynamic, constantly changing system of AI agents working on behalf of people and businesses to complete dynamic tasks at runtime.
Our mission is to unlock the agent economy by empowering developers and enterprises with the secure, scalable foundations they need to build, deploy, adopt, and trust agentic applications. To do this, we’re building the real-time, in-band, contextual guardrails required to transition from human-driven to truly autonomous and agentic workflows that give users, builders, and security teams the confidence and control they need to bring agents out of the lab and into production.
At our core, we’re laser-focused on delivering a delightful, best-in-class developer experience that gives them the tools they need to create category-defining applications and experiences while giving platform and security teams the security, scalability, visibility, control, and enablement they need to accelerate their organizations journey to becoming agent native.
We’re a small, distributed team of repeat founders and builders, with backgrounds from Snyk, Auth0, HashiCorp, and Heroku.
Joining Keycard now means helping define not just our technology, but also the culture and company we’re building together - during a once-in-a-generation platform shift.

The Role

We're hiring a Staff Platform Engineer to build the core systems and infrastructure that power Keycard - from identity services and enforcement paths to the developer platforms and automation that let every engineer ship with confidence.
Keycard is a control plane for agents: identity propagation, policy enforcement, audit logging, and runtime governance. You'll move up and down the stack - building Kubernetes operators and CI/CD automation one day, contributing to core product services the next. The systems you build need to provide deterministic guarantees around delivery, consistency, and availability, creating the leverage Keycard needs to deliver trusted agent-native experiences at global scale.
You'll work directly with founders, product, design, and the engineers building our SDKs and core services. You'll also help shape how we use agents internally - contributing to how Keycard becomes an agent-native engineering organization, not just a company that builds for one.

What We're Looking For

• You're a builder first, operator second - a programmer at heart who uses Go and/or Rust to create platforms and product systems. You've built developer-facing platforms (Kubernetes operators, CI/CD abstractions, internal tooling) as well as core services, and you think in terms of dynamic, reactive systems.
• Strong distributed systems instincts. You have expertise in consensus, coordination, and state management, and you build systems that are secure, resilient, and fault-tolerant with best-in-class observability.
• You treat the path to production as a product surface. You create automation, pipelines, and developer platforms that make shipping reliable software the default - empowering every engineer to deliver quickly and with confidence.
• You thrive in 0-1 environments. You make hard trade-offs to ship today while laying groundwork for the long-term system, and you use iteration to accelerate the learning loop.
• You lead by example - raising the bar for technical excellence while helping those around you grow. You communicate clearly through written plans and async updates, and know when to jump on a call.
  

Strong Candidates May Also Have

• Experience with identity and access protocols (OIDC, OAuth, mTLS) and active engagement with emerging agent protocols like MCP and A2A.
• Background in edge computing, intelligent routing, or globally distributed systems - with ideas about how to make agent-native applications fast and resilient anywhere.
• Experience extending runtimes with eBPF, service meshes, custom Kubernetes operators, or plugin-driven architectures (WASM, dynamic policy engines).
• Hands-on experimentation with coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, MCP) and strong opinions on how engineering organizations should adopt them.
  

What we offer

• Build at the Frontier: Work every day at the frontier of agent-native systems - shipping, inventing, and iterating on technology that hasn’t been built before. You’ll be given huge autonomy, the opportunity to gain mastery, and the chance to work in a team that holds each other accountable to succeed.
• Truly Agent-Native Culture: At Keycard, we don’t just enable others to adopt agents - we use them ourselves to build. You’ll help shape an organization that embeds AI into its foundation as an enduring competitive advantage.
• Compensation With Upside: Market-competitive salaries and generous equity packages (4-year vest, 1-year cliff) give you the security to focus on building - and the asymmetric upside of ownership in a company chasing a category-defining mission.
• Comprehensive Benefits & Recharge: Health, dental, vision, and paramedical coverage for you and your family, plus 4 weeks vacation, 11 statutory holidays, and 1 volunteer day annually. We encourage at least 2 weeks off each year to fully recharge.
• Tools That Keep You Ahead: A new MacBook Pro, a $500 stipend for peripherals, and the best AI tools available so you can work at the forefront of agent-native workflows.
• Remote-First Flexibility: We are a remote-first team prioritizing asynchronous collaboration, with hiring focused in North and South America. Work where you’re strongest - we just want the best.
  

Why Join Us?

Keycard is building the fundamental unlock for the next generation of software: enabling truly secure and trusted agentic applications. Under the hood, we’re building a new identity and access control stack to take us from a world of static, user-focused, long-lived roles and credentialing to one of mixed machine & human interaction that is dynamic, contextually-scoped, and short-lived.
By joining as an early employee, you’ll have the opportunity to help curate a culture of iterative craftsmanship, disciplined design, empowerment to own meaningful problems, and consistent high-quality delivery with real impact. You’ll collaborate with the founders and investors who have championed identity, security, and developer tools from seed to scale with companies like Snyk, Auth0, and Heroku.
If you’re energized by tackling complex distributed systems and want to advance both developer productivity and security posture, with a hunger to learn, have an impact, and move quickly with determination we’d love to explore how you can help us shape the future of software.