Software Engineer, Systems

Keycard Labs

6d•Remote

About The Position

We're hiring a Staff Platform Engineer to build the core systems and infrastructure that power Keycard — from identity services and enforcement paths to the developer platforms and automation that let every engineer ship with confidence. Keycard is a control plane for agents: identity propagation, policy enforcement, audit logging, and runtime governance. You'll move up and down the stack — building Kubernetes operators and CI/CD automation one day, contributing to core product services the next. The systems you build need to provide deterministic guarantees around delivery, consistency, and availability, creating the leverage Keycard needs to deliver trusted agent-native experiences at global scale. You'll work directly with founders, product, design, and the engineers building our SDKs and core services. You'll also help shape how we use agents internally — contributing to how Keycard becomes an agent-native engineering organization, not just a company that builds for one.

Requirements

Builder first, operator second — a programmer at heart who uses Go and/or Rust to create platforms and product systems.
Experience building developer-facing platforms (Kubernetes operators, CI/CD abstractions, internal tooling) as well as core services.
Strong distributed systems instincts.
Expertise in consensus, coordination, and state management.
Ability to build systems that are secure, resilient, and fault-tolerant with best-in-class observability.
Treat the path to production as a product surface, creating automation, pipelines, and developer platforms that make shipping reliable software the default.
Thrive in 0→1 environments, making hard trade-offs to ship today while laying groundwork for the long-term system.
Lead by example — raising the bar for technical excellence while helping those around you grow.
Communicate clearly through written plans and async updates, and know when to jump on a call.

Nice To Haves

Experience with identity and access protocols (OIDC, OAuth, mTLS) and active engagement with emerging agent protocols like MCP and A2A.
Background in edge computing, intelligent routing, or globally distributed systems.
Experience extending runtimes with eBPF, service meshes, custom Kubernetes operators, or plugin-driven architectures (WASM, dynamic policy engines).
Hands-on experimentation with coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, MCP) and strong opinions on how engineering organizations should adopt them.

Responsibilities

Build the core systems and infrastructure that power Keycard, including identity services, enforcement paths, developer platforms, and automation.
Build Kubernetes operators and CI/CD automation.
Contribute to core product services.
Build systems that provide deterministic guarantees around delivery, consistency, and availability.
Help shape how Keycard uses agents internally.
Curate a culture of iterative craftsmanship, disciplined design, empowerment to own meaningful problems, and consistent high-quality delivery.