DevX / Developer Operations (Partner 16, Partner 18), ASG

a16z•San Francisco, CA

6h•$269,000 - $352,000•Hybrid

About The Position

You will join the Applied Software Group (ASG), a team of experienced individual contributors building internal software tools for the firm's investing and operations teams. As our first Developer Experience (Dev X) engineer, you will own, improve and help with the adoption of our internal developer platform as well as the team's wider product portfolio. You will work on and own the infrastructure and tooling that the team and its partners are building with. The Applied Software Group operates in the mode of an internal startup. We own a tight feedback loop with our users and take on requests from all corners of the firm. In this role, your users are your fellow colleagues — you'll understand their pain points, eliminate friction from their daily workflows, and build the platform and tools that lets everyone build more, faster, and with confidence. While doing so, you will closely work together with your fellow engineers and other teams throughout the firm. This role requires an in-office presence 2-3 days a week in our San Francisco, CA office.

Requirements

3+ years of professional software engineering experience
Proficiency in Python 3, Rust or similar backend languages and willingness to learn new technologies
Track record of defining and shipping developer platforms or internal tooling that measurably improved engineering velocity
Excitement to work directly with a diverse user group with varying technical backgrounds
Experience deploying services on at least one major cloud platform (GCP, AWS, or Azure)
Experience with containerized services (Docker); experience with Kubernetes is a plus
Exposure to CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, Cloud Build, CircleCI, or similar)
Experience working with production SQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL); NoSQL experience (e.g., Elasticsearch) is a plus
Experience with infrastructure-as-code concepts (Terraform, Pulumi, or similar) is a plus
Experience working in environments that value rapid iteration, code quality, and operational excellence
Strong problem-solving skills and solid technical fundamentals with a get-it-done mentality
Low ego, high empathy, and the capacity to collaborate effectively with diverse teams

Nice To Haves

experience with Kubernetes is a plus
NoSQL experience (e.g., Elasticsearch) is a plus
Experience with infrastructure-as-code concepts (Terraform, Pulumi, or similar) is a plus

Responsibilities

Contribute to and help improve the our developer platform, associated with a diverse set of applications
Continuously work with your fellow colleagues to understand, review and assist their diverse use-cases for projects
Build and maintain shared tooling, templates, and internal libraries that accelerate development across the firm’s products
Support observability, monitoring, and alerting so engineers can self-serve when things break in production
Collaborate with the Cybersecurity team to help ensure developer workflows meet security and compliance requirements
Write and maintain developer documentation, onboarding guides, and runbooks that actually get used
Ship improvements iteratively, incorporating feedback from your users to continuously improve the developer experience
Take ownership of assigned projects and services, from development through production support, with increasing autonomy over time
Write clear, well-structured, and maintainable code
Bring positive energy in every interaction with the team and foster inclusive collaboration
Stay curious about new tools, technologies, and approaches relevant to infrastructure and developer productivity
Learn the inner workings of VC and work closely with the investing partnership