Forward Deployed Engineer, Substrate

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Our client is a publicly listed company building out an entirely new team.

About the role

The Highside Substrate team is responsible for our client's core production infrastructure — managing hundreds of Kubernetes clusters across on-premises and major cloud hyperscalers in classified USG environments.

You will design and build managed Kubernetes product offerings across these environments.

You and your team will bootstrap and operate the entire fleet of Kubernetes clusters with minimal manual intervention by developing industry-leading tooling and contributing to CNCF projects. You will ensure scalability, stability, and security across various compliance regimes and infrastructure types. Our team culture emphasizes engineering rigor and operational excellence, focusing on pre-empting issues, root cause analysis, and automation through self-healing systems.

If you’re passionate about infrastructure at scale and Kubernetes, this is the role for you.

Responsibilities

• Build automation and standards for secure, scalable Kubernetes operations with zero manual overhead
• Drive innovation by adopting new Kubernetes features and CNCF tools, contributing upstream as needed
• Design next-generation infrastructure based on deep understanding of internal systems and CNCF standards
• Develop container runtime solutions for challenging classified environments, including new clouds, on-premises, and edge devices

Tech stack

Kubernetes, Golang, Terraform, Docker, CNCF components, Networking fundamentals

Candidate requirements

• Active Security Clearance (Secret or TS) required
• 2-6 years of experience with Kubernetes
• Experience building performance-optimized systems
• Demonstrates "Extreme ownership" — ownership of core systems and long-term commitment to projects
• Understanding of tradeoffs in fast-paced startup environments and flexibility in design
• Product-minded backend engineer
• Experience with complex backend systems, infrastructure management, and some Dev Ops

Salary range: $135,000 - $300,000 + Equity