Software Engineer - Infrastructure; GCP & Platform

About You

As a Software Engineer (Infra Focus), you will own the infrastructure backbone that keeps Optiml's platform fast, reliable, and ready to scale—operating at the intersection of backend engineering and cloud infrastructure, where your decisions directly shape how the product is built and shipped.

This is a hands‑on engineering role: you will manage and evolve Optiml's GCP infrastructure, drive CI/CD and release processes end‑to‑end, and contribute directly to the codebase on core systems like RBAC and job queues. You are as comfortable in a Python codebase as you are configuring IAM policies or leading an incident response.

You are expected to be proactive and opinionated—identifying infrastructure debt before it becomes a problem, setting a pragmatic direction for the platform, and executing without waiting to be asked. You bring reliability and composure to production systems, and the clarity and communication skills to bring the rest of the team with you.

About Optiml

Optiml is transforming real estate with Real Estate Decision Intelligence (REDI), an AI‑powered decision technology that helps decarbonise buildings while optimising asset and portfolio financial performance.

Our platform helps investors, owners, and asset managers make clearer capital allocation and decarbonisation decisions by translating complex regulatory, financial, and technical constraints into actionable renovation and investment plans.

Founded as an ETH Zurich spin‑off, Optiml launched its first product in April 2024 and is now scaling across Europe and the US, with teams based in Zurich, London, and across Germany. The company is backed by leading US and European investors, including Innovation Endeavors (the fund of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt), Planet A Ventures, KOMPAS, Bit Stone Capital, and The Bau Ventures.

Following an oversubscribed €8M Seed round, we are accelerating product development and go‑to‑market execution.

Responsibilities

• Set infrastructure direction: identify the highest‑leverage problems, scope projects, and drive the team to solve them.
• Collaborate and implement new features in the codebase (Python + Typescript) that touch the core infrastructure (e.g., RBAC, Job Queues).
• Own and operate Optiml's GCP infrastructure (Cloud Run, networking, IAM, TLS, and firewall rules).
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment workflows, and developer experience.
• Own and push to simplify the release process end‑to‑end: staging, E2E tests, QA, production deployment, rollbacks, and communication.
• Run on‑call and incident response: manage rotations, enforce severity processes, and ensure uptime.
• Partner with IT/Security on vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and infrastructure hardening.
• Close documentation gaps and improve observability & monitoring.

What this role is NOT

• Not a Kubernetes/platform engineering role.
• Not focused on Terraform‑heavy infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Not a pure Dev Ops “pipeline‑only” role. This is a hands‑on engineering role at the intersection of backend and infrastructure.

Who we are looking for

• Embrace Challenges: You prioritize speed and flexibility, adept at making swift compromises to maintain momentum in a startup environment.
• Push The Limits: You proactively identify bottlenecks and infrastructure debt, then drive the fixes without waiting to be asked.
• Inspire Others: You bring kindness and humor to the team, enhancing both morale and collaboration.
• Champion Reliability: Your attention to detail ensures production systems are stable, releases are smooth, and incidents are handled with composure.
• Set The Direction
  :
  You're opinionated about how infrastructure should work and can articulate a pragmatic vision for the platform's evolution.

Must have

• BSc/MSc in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, or platform engineering roles.
• Strong experience with a major cloud platform (preferably GCP), including compute, storage, networking, IAM, and container‑based deployments.
• Solid experience building, optimising, and managing containerised applications (e.g., Docker or similar).
• Proficiency in Python…