{"id":678906,"url":"https://alion.io/job/friendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2","title":"Software Engineer - Cloud Infrastructure","company":{"id":673295,"name":"FriendliAI","domain":"friendli.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/friendli","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":68,"open_postings":17,"ghost_share":0.529,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Seoul, South Korea"],"countries":["KR"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Ansible","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"eBPF","optional":false},{"name":"etcd","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"Helm","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Service Mesh","optional":false},{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"Cilium","optional":true},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":true},{"name":"InfiniBand","optional":true},{"name":"Istio","optional":true},{"name":"NCCL","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-07T02:37:05Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T07:49:50Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":85,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":85},"description":"About the job\nFriendliAI is looking for a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to own the architecture and evolution of the cluster platform behind our GPU-accelerated AI inference cloud. As a Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure, you will design how our clusters are built and connected, extend Kubernetes where its defaults fall short, and own the network path that inference traffic depends on.\nInference is an unforgiving workload for Kubernetes. Traffic is bursty and latency-sensitive, GPU capacity is scarce and inelastic, tenants must stay isolated, and multi-node serving depends on the network holding up under sustained load. This is a hands-on architecture role for an engineer who has already run large clusters in production and wants to push them further.\nKey Responsibilities\nCluster Architecture\nOwn the architecture of our multi-cluster, multi-tenant Kubernetes fleet across both managed and self-managed clusters: cluster topology, control plane and etcd lifecycle, and zero-downtime upgrades.\n\nExtend Kubernetes with custom controllers, operators, and CRDs so platform behavior is encoded in software rather than runbooks.\n\nDesign GPU scheduling and capacity strategy, including topology-aware placement, node pools, priority and preemption, and quota across tenants.\n\nBuild autoscaling that matches inference traffic: queue-driven pod scaling, node autoscaling, scale-to-zero, and cold-start reduction.\n\nNetworking\nOwn the Kubernetes network data plane: CNI, IPAM, DNS, ingress, and L4/L7 load balancing.\n\nDesign cross-AZ, cross-region, and cross-cluster connectivity, and operate the service mesh for routing, mTLS, and traffic policy.\n\nDebug production network issues (packet loss, conntrack exhaustion, MTU mismatches, DNS latency, load balancer behavior) and drive permanent fixes.\n\nReliability & Collaboration\nDefine SLOs for platform-critical systems and lead post-incident hardening.\n\nDeliver infrastructure as code with Terraform, Helm, and GitOps.\n\nPartner with the inference engine, platform, SRE, and security teams to turn serving requirements into platform capabilities.\n\nQualifications\n5+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale Kubernetes infrastructure in production.\n\nBachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent.\n\nProven experience operating large-scale, high-traffic network services in production.\n\nDeep understanding of Kubernetes internals: API server, scheduler, controller loops, kubelet, and etcd.\n\nStrong command of Kubernetes and cloud networking: CNI, kube-proxy/eBPF datapaths, DNS, load balancing, service mesh, and VPC routing.\n\nProficiency with AWS, Terraform, Helm, and Ansible.\n\nProgramming skills in Go or Python, with the ability to build infrastructure tooling and automation.\n\nStrong debugging skills across distributed systems, containers, and the Linux networking stack.\n\nClear written and verbal communication, including the ability to document architectural decisions for other engineers.\n\nPreferred Experience\nLarge-scale Kubernetes operations in a high-traffic domain such as gaming, e-commerce, or public cloud.\n\nCilium and eBPF, including kube-proxy replacement or upstream contributions.\n\nCluster provisioning and lifecycle management with Kubespray or similar Ansible-based tooling.\n\nGPU orchestration: NVIDIA GPU Operator, device plugins, or Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA).\n\nHigh-performance networking for distributed workloads: RDMA/RoCE, InfiniBand, EFA, SR-IOV, or NCCL tuning.\n\nMulti-cloud, hybrid-cloud, or bare-metal Kubernetes operations.\n\nContributions to Kubernetes, Cilium, Istio, or other CNCF projects.\n\nBenefits\nFlexible working hours\n\nDaily lunch and dinner provided; unlimited snacks and beverages\n\nSupportive and highly collaborative work environment\n\nHealth check-up support and top-tier equipment/hardware support\n\nA front-row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution\n\nCompetitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits.\n\nAbout FriendliAI\nFriendliAI is the fastest inference cloud for agents, built to run frontier open-weight models in production at scale. It delivers up to 7x faster output token speed, up to 90% lower inference costs, and 99.99% uptime across the most demanding agent workloads - long-context inference, real-time streaming, and accurate tool calling.\nWe are a small, fast-moving team doing work that matters at one of the most exciting moments in the history of technology. With our world-class inference stack, we are building the platform teams can actually rely on.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4596,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible schedule","Health insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","LLM & Generative AI","AI Agents"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-10T23:15:26Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":11,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.385,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":85,"expected_fill_days":36,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/friendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/friendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-31T11:21:47Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":17425,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-01T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":673295},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=673295"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ffriendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ffriendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ffriendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/friendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ffriendli-software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":678906}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"friendli.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":678906},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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