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Handshake

Staff Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

🇺🇸 Remote - US

🕑 Full-Time

💰 $210,000 - $240,000

💻 Software Engineering

🗓️ April 30th, 2024

GCP Infrastructure Kubernetes
Everyone is welcome at Handshake. We know diverse teams build better products and we are committed to creating an inclusive culture built on a foundation of respect for all individuals. We strongly encourage candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, historically marginalized or underrepresented groups to apply.

Your impact


At Handshake, we are assembling a team of dynamic engineers who are passionate about building high-quality, impactful, self-service platforms. As a Staff Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, you will spearhead the management of our Infrastructure as Code and Kubernetes platforms, guaranteeing their seamless operation in a scalable cloud environment. Your expertise will be pivotal in optimizing our platforms for maximum efficiency and reliability, owning our Technical Excellence and SRE programs, ensuring they meet the demands of our growing business while maintaining robust scalability. You'll play a crucial role in mentoring and developing junior engineers, fostering a collaborative and growth-oriented team culture.

Your role


  • Design, implement, and maintain scalable cloud infrastructure solutions using industry best practices.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure smooth integration of infrastructure components and broader application architecture.
  • Monitor, analyze, and optimize cloud infrastructure performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
  • Automate deployment, configuration, and management tasks using infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform and Spacelift.
  • Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior members of the infrastructure team.
  • Participate in on-call rotations to address infrastructure-related incidents and ensure high availability of our cloud services and the Handshake Platform.
  • Stay updated on emerging cloud technologies and trends, evaluating their potential impact on existing infrastructure and recommending appropriate adoption strategies.
  • Design and document infrastructure configurations, procedures, and best practices to facilitate knowledge sharing and maintain operational efficiency.
  • Lead our Technical Excellence program, increasing observability and measurement of KPIs & SLOs across our platforms.
  • Implement modern, cloud-native solutions such as service mesh, advanced scaling and deployment strategies, workflow orchestration.
  • Develop and improve processes to provide self-service and first-class user experience for our engineers.
  • Be a thought leader, drive innovation by helping to develop team roadmaps aligning with our business goals.
  • Work in a 100% Cloud Environment (GCP) and use tools and services like Argo Workflows, Argo CD, Datadog, Kubernetes, improving the reliability and scalability of our platforms.

Your experience


  • You are adept with agile software development lifecycle and DevOps principles
  • You thrive taking projects from inception to completion and are outcome-oriented, measuring business impact
  • You act with empathy when partnering with fellow engineers and coworkers, focusing on user experience and simplicity
  • You build and maintaining cloud-based architectures in AWS and/or GCP, at scale
  • You have expertise with Kubernetes, IaC, observability and modern infrastructure tooling
  • You have prior experience with building and maintaining self-service tooling and guardrails
  • You have experience in securing Cloud workloads through implementing best practices such as OPA, RBAC, and utilizing Kubernetes security features
  • You have experience building or working directly with SRE in areas related to Operational Readiness and Incident Response
  • You have Infrastructure networking experience: firewalls, load balancing, DNS, etc.
  • You are passionate about building simple, yet high-quality infrastructure
  • You have experience working in distributed, performant, at-scale backend systems
  • You are strong in Operations and have a passion for automation and reducing toil

Bonus areas of expertise


  • GitOps & Argo ecosystem of tools
  • Service Mesh (istio, Linkerd, etc.)
  • ElasticSearch and search indexing, semantic and vector search experience
  • Distributed tracing and observability with tools like Datadog, OTEL
  • FinOps and cloud cost controls/governance

Compensation range


$210,000-$240,000

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

About us


Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 750,000+ employers - from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, and nonprofits. In 2022 we announced our $200M Series F funding round. This Series F fundraise and valuation of $3.5B will fuel Handshake’s next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.

When it comes to our workforce strategy, we’ve thought deeply about how work-life should look here at Handshake. With our Hub-Based Remote Working strategy, employees can enjoy the flexibility of remote work, whilst ensuring collaboration and team experiences in a shared space remains possible. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, London, and Berlin and teammates working globally. 
Check out our careers site to find a hub near you!

What we offer


At Handshake, we'll give you the tools to feel healthy, happy and secure.

Benefits below apply to employees in full-time positions.

  • πŸ’° Equity and ownership in a fast-growing company.
  • 🍼 16 Weeks of paid parental leave for birth giving parents & 10 weeks of paid parental leave for non-birth giving parents.
  • πŸ’ Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage. We also provide resources for Mental Health Assistance, Employee Assistance Programs and counseling support.
  • πŸ’» Handshake offers $500/Β£360 home office stipend for you to spend during your first 3 months to create a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
  • πŸ“š Generous learning & development opportunities and an annual $2,000/Β£1,500/€1,850 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
  • πŸ’° Financial coaching through Origin to help you through your financial journey.
  • πŸ›œ Monthly internet stipend and a brand new MacBook to allow you to do your best work.
  • πŸšƒ Monthly commuter stipend for you to expense your travel to the office (for office-based employees).
  • πŸ₯— Free lunch provided twice a week across all offices.
  • 🀝 Referral bonus to reward you when you bring great talent to Handshake.

(US-specific benefits, in addition to the first section)

  • 🏦 401k Match: Handshake offers a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year.
  • 🏝 All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. In addition, we offer 8 standardized holidays, and 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off. Lastly, we have a Winter #ShakeBreak, a one-week period of Collective Time Off.
  • 🍼 Lactation support: Handshake partners with Milk Stork to provide a comprehensive 100% employer-sponsored lactation support to traveling parents and guardians.