What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Infrastructure Engineer position at Adaption?
About Us
We believe the future is adaptable, and not one-size-fits-all. We will lead in real-time efficient adaptation that combines algorithm with innovative interface design. Our global team—based in SF and beyond—brings together top talent in AI innovation. Backed by world-class investors, we're building Adaptable Intelligence.
The Role
You'll be one of our first engineering hires, working closely with the founding engineering team to set up the core infrastructure systems that will power our product, including CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, observability, and cloud infrastructure. You thrive in zero-to-one environments and enjoy owning the full lifecycle of infrastructure design and implementation. You’re comfortable wearing multiple hats, making pragmatic technical decisions, and laying down scalable, secure foundations for future growth.
Responsibilities
We believe the future is adaptable, and not one-size-fits-all. We will lead in real-time efficient adaptation that combines algorithm with innovative interface design. Our global team—based in SF and beyond—brings together top talent in AI innovation. Backed by world-class investors, we're building Adaptable Intelligence.
The Role
You'll be one of our first engineering hires, working closely with the founding engineering team to set up the core infrastructure systems that will power our product, including CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, observability, and cloud infrastructure. You thrive in zero-to-one environments and enjoy owning the full lifecycle of infrastructure design and implementation. You’re comfortable wearing multiple hats, making pragmatic technical decisions, and laying down scalable, secure foundations for future growth.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and own the cloud infrastructure from scratch (0→1), with a focus on scalability, reliability, and security
- Define and implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform (or similar tools)
- Set up and manage Kubernetes clusters for service orchestration and deployment
- Design, deploy, and manage GPU clusters for AI/ML training and inference workloads
- Build CI/CD pipelines to automate deployment and testing
- Implement observability best practices (monitoring, logging, alerting)
- Collaborate closely with backend and product engineers to define deployment and scaling strategies
- Ensure infrastructure cost-efficiency and help set up cost monitoring tools
- Define internal best practices for DevOps and platform engineering
- 5 years of experience as a Infrastructure / SRE / Platform / DevOps engineer
- Experience designing and building cloud-native infrastructure from scratch (preferably in AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Proficient with Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, or self-managed clusters)
- Experience setting up and managing GPU resources and clusters for machine learning workloads
- Strong hands-on experience with Terraform and Infrastructure as Code best practices
- Experience building CI/CD pipelines using tools like GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, CircleCI, or similar
- Familiar with monitoring and logging stacks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK, etc.)
- Security-minded and familiar with cloud and container security best practices
- Ability to balance ideal solutions with startup pragmatism and speed
- Experience in a fast-paced startup environment
- Knowledge of service mesh technologies (e.g., Istio, Linkerd)
- Experience with serverless infrastructure or hybrid architectures
- Contributions to open-source infrastructure tools
- Competitive salary meaningful equity
- Learning and development budget to support your growth as you adapt
- Comprehensive medical benefits and generous PTO
- Annual travel stipend to explore somewhere new—because building global technology means staying adaptable to new places and perspectives
- Mission-driven team shaping the future of intelligence, where you'll enjoy high ownership and the opportunity to make a career-defining impact