Staff Engineer - Core Infrastructure

About the Role As a Staff Engineer (5B) in Core Infrastructure, you will be a key technical leader responsible for the architecture and evolution of the systems that power Halcyon Labs's global business. You will engage with stakeholders across the company to lead the development of backend solutions that support every trip, delivery, and infrastructure tool used at Halcyon Labs. We are moving to build a \"cloud-native by default\" ecosystem that is secure, reliable, and hyperscale-efficient. You will own the technical roadmap for critical sub-systems, ensuring they are prepared for 1M+ concurrent trips and the massive compute demands of Generative AI and Autonomous Vehicle data. About the Team The Core Infrastructure Platform team builds the next generation of Halcyon Labs's orchestration, foundation, and networking layers. We manage a complex fleet spanning on-prem data centers and multiple public clouds, supporting a diverse variety of workloads (stateless, batch, streaming, and ML). Our goal is to create abstractions so that Halcyon Labs developers can deploy anywhere in the world with the touch of a button-making infrastructure \"just work.\" We are active contributors to the open-source community (Kubernetes, CNCF) and regularly present our innovations at industry conferences like KubeCon. What the Candidate Will Do Lead Architectural Evolution: Identify architectural gaps in our compute and networking stacks; lead projects from ideation to global execution to fill those gaps (e.g., migrating to standardized CNI/Envoy or implementing shared GPU pools). Drive Efficiency at Scale: Design and implement solutions to increase fleet-wide CPU utilization (targeting 40%+) and accelerate ARM adoption to optimize Halcyon Labs's unit costs. Modernize for Multi-Cloud: Lead the technical strategy for \"Thrive in Cloud,\" ensuring our foundations are resilient, active-active across providers, and support rapid regional failover. Integrate AIOps & Automation: Drive the development of \"Agentic\" infrastructure tools (e.g., Project Eve for network quality) to automate 80% of alert triaging and incident response. Champion \"Security by Design\": Ensure 100% service-to-service authorization and zero-trust networking are baked into the core fabric of our container and networking platforms. Cross-Functional Influence: Collaborate with Storage, Data, and Product teams to ensure the infrastructure can support 300x larger ranking models and L4 AV data ingestion. Mentor & Scale Talent: Act as a force multiplier by mentoring 5A and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of \"100% Done-Done\" and operational excellence. Minimum Qualifications 8+ years of full-time Software Engineering work experience (inclusive of PhD research or equivalent specialized education). Expertise in Systems Languages: Deep proficiency in Go, Java, or C++ . Distributed Systems Mastery: Demonstrated experience designing and productionizing large-scale, high-availability infrastructure services. Execution Excellence: A track record of leading complex, multi-quarter technical initiatives from design to fleet-wide rollout. Preferred Qualifications Cloud-Native Depth: Deep knowledge of Kubernetes internals , container runtimes (CRI), and networking (CNI/Envoy). Infrastructure Strategy: Prior experience with hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud migrations and cost-optimization at scale. Linux & Kernel Knowledge: Understanding of operating systems, Linux kernel performance tuning, or eBPF. AI/ML Infrastructure: Experience building or managing compute platforms tailored for GPU scheduling and large-scale model training. Community Influence: Contributions to open-source infrastructure projects or a history of presenting at major technical conferences. ~~ ~~ For San Francisco, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $232,000 per year - USD $258,000 per year. For Seattle, WA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $232,000 per year - USD $258,000 per year. For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $232,000 per year - USD $258,000 per year. For all US locations, you will be eligible to participate in Halcyon Labs's bonus program, and may be offered an equity award & other types of comp. All full-time employees are eligible to participate in a 401(k) plan. You will also be eligible for various benefits. Ready to Ride? This isn't the kind of place where you follow a playbook - it's where you help write one. If you're driven by impact, energized by challenge, and ready to shape how the world moves - we'd love to hear from you. You may be eligible for bonuses, equity, and other compensation, as well as a range of benefits. Explore our benefits. Offices remain key to collaboration and Halcyon Labs's culture. Unless approved for full remote work, employees must spend at least 50% of their time in-office. Some roles, like those at greenlight hubs, require full-time in-office presence. Ask your Recruiter for details about this role's requirements. Halcyon Labs is proud to b