Infrastructure Engineer

Alphataraxia•Washington, DC

15h•$180,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Alphataraxia Management is hiring an Infrastructure Engineer for its Platform Team. The role owns the firm’s Infrastructure area, including its AWS foundation and networking, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitOps, the Dagster control plane, Snowflake infrastructure, security, identity and secrets, disaster recovery, cost and capacity planning, and remote access. The Infrastructure Engineer will be the principal person focused on this area, supported by the rest of the Platform Team as they ramp up. During the first several months, the Head of Platform will work collaboratively with the engineer to set priorities while they learn the systems and the firm. The engineer will then own the Infrastructure roadmap like a product owner: identify problems, prioritize work, recommend approaches, communicate tradeoffs, and execute core technical work. The role works with stakeholders throughout the firm and the Platform Team to address current needs and anticipate future scaling requirements. A small amount of IT-adjacent work, primarily access provisioning and security, is included. The role participates in a five-person Platform Team on-call rotation. Outside-of-work-hours pages are uncommon, and much of the on-call work involves handling non-urgent overnight failures after arriving at work. Some issues may be time-sensitive due to power-market bid deadlines. The role is based in Washington, DC, in a hybrid arrangement, generally with office attendance Tuesday through Thursday and remote flexibility Monday and Friday. Fully remote work is available during July and between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

Requirements

Demonstrated ownership and ability to drive an infrastructure roadmap without relying on a predefined queue of scoped tickets.
Ability to treat internal engineers as customers, explain the rationale for infrastructure changes, and communicate tradeoffs and recommendations in context.
Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining production Kubernetes, such as EKS, and Terraform.
Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining GitOps workflows, such as Flux or Atlantis.
Deep Docker knowledge sufficient to debug container problems through the operating system and network layers.
Experience with cloud networking, secrets, certificates, and secure service-to-service connectivity.
Experience building self-service tooling for other engineers.
Ability to prioritize work for the needs of the firm and favor appropriately simple solutions over unnecessary scaling.

Nice To Haves

Experience with workflow orchestration infrastructure.
Experience with Snowflake and RDS infrastructure.
Experience with Karpenter.
Python experience.
Experience designing multi-region or multi-provider disaster recovery.
Experience managing externally issued credentials and certificates.

Responsibilities

Own and drive the Infrastructure roadmap, prioritizing projects based on firm needs and stakeholder feedback.
Design, implement, and maintain the AWS foundation and networking, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitOps, Dagster control plane, Snowflake infrastructure, security, identity and secrets, disaster recovery, cost and capacity planning, and remote access.
Work with internal stakeholders to understand infrastructure needs, explain the rationale for changes, and anticipate future scaling needs.
Collaborate with the Platform Team to synthesize project next steps, recommend technical approaches, and execute core technical work.
Automate recurring work and maintain high standards for reliability and security.
Handle access provisioning and other limited IT-adjacent security work.
Participate in the Platform Team’s five-person on-call rotation and respond to infrastructure or other platform issues.

Benefits

Annual discretionary bonus and/or signing bonus.
18 paid vacation days and 7 paid federal holidays.
Health, dental, and vision insurance, including an HSA option; no monthly premiums for the platinum individual plan.
401(k) match: 100% company matching on the first 4% of deferrals, with immediate vesting.
Annual firmwide weeklong summit.
Hybrid remote work with remote flexibility Monday and Friday; typically in-office Tuesday through Thursday.
Fully remote work option for July and between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Casual work environment with informal attire.
Office snacks and unlimited coffee.
Firm-sponsored social events and activities, including happy hours, lunches, and book club.