Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Job Overview

Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure
Location: San Francisco, CA
Employment Type: Full time
Location Type: Hybrid
Department: Engineering
Compensation: Estimated Base $170K – $220K • Offers Equity • Offers Benefits

About Sift

Sift is the data infrastructure platform for hardware engineering teams. Sift turns high-frequency telemetry into engineering insights for mission-critical systems. Teams use Sift to build and operate rockets, satellites, autonomous vehicles, energy systems, defense platforms, and more.

Founded by former SpaceX engineers who built the tools behind Dragon and Starlink, Sift is building the data infrastructure to herald the AI era for physical systems.

In This Role, You'll:

• Design, build, and maintain scalable, resilient infrastructure solutions to support our growing platform and customer base.


• Collaborate with software engineers to optimize application performance and reliability.


• Implement monitoring, alerting, and logging systems to ensure proactive identification and resolution of issues.


• Automate deployment processes and streamline infrastructure management using modern DevOps tools and methodologies.


• Evolve our backend architecture/infrastructure for both cloud and on-premise deployments.


• Work with the team to set and prioritize our roadmap to maximize customer impact.


• Lead initiatives to improve infrastructure reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.

The Skillset You'll Bring:

• 8+ years of relevant distributed systems experience focusing on designing and managing cloud-based environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).


• Hands-on experience with containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) and container orchestration platforms.


• Passion for building and operating developer productivity tools, frameworks, and other aspects of platform engineering.


• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and version control systems.


• Knowledge of automated testing best practices and frameworks, ensuring software reliability through integration, performance, and end-to-end testing in distributed systems.


• You're excited by the ambiguity and high-ownership culture of early-stage startups.


• You are pragmatic, solution-oriented, and scrappy.


• You enjoy working collaboratively with a broad range of job functions and roles.


• Experience with our tech stack: Go, Java, React, TypeScript, Kafka/Redpanda, Flink, AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform/CDK


• Or equivalent distributed systems


• Good knowledge of cloud, on-prem, networking, and service architecture in multi-region multi-cloud setups.

Engineering At SIFT:

You'll have the opportunity to help evolve and scale our platform because we're still in the early stages of building the product. Relevant technologies include:

Web frontend & backend: ECharts, Go, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Protobuf, Radix, React, Redux, and TypeScript
Data: Arrow, DataFusion, Flink, Parquet, and Rust
Infrastructure: Argo CD, AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, Kubernetes, Kustomize, Linux, Prometheus, and Terragrunt

Location:

Sift’s headquarters is in Marina Del Rey, CA (Next to LAX). We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—and come together for a full week every two months. We are open to relocating candidates to LA or working from our San Francisco office for the right candidate.

Salary range:

$170,000 - $220,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.

Eligibility:

U.S. Person Required: Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) regulations.