Production Engineer

Production Engineer | Platform / Infrastructure | AI Startup | On-site (San Francisco)

Eligibility:
Only candidates with startup experience a strong backend engineering experience, deep infrastructure ownership, and hands-on production responsibility will be considered.

Salary:
$160k - $210k + Meaningful equity (up to 1%)

Required Sector Experience:
Product-led SaaS / AI-first / High-growth startup

Working Model:
On-site - San Francisco (5 days per week)

Must-Have Expertise:
Backend engineering (Python), CI/CD ownership, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), production reliability, startup environments

Strict Requirements – Please Read Before Applying

Only apply if you meet every
requirement below:

3+ years' experience in backend, production, platform, SRE, or infrastructure-focused engineering roles

Strong
hands-on coding ability
(Python)
- this is not a tooling-only role

Proven ownership of
production systems
, uptime, and reliability

Deep experience designing, running, and scaling
CI/CD pipelines

Extensive, hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
(e.g. Compute, networking, IAM, databases, observability)

Experience building and operating
cloud-native systems on GCP
in production

Experience improving
developer experience
through internal tools and automation

Comfortable leading
incident response
, post-mortems, and preventing recurrence through code

Able to work independently with high ownership in a fast-moving startup

Strong communication skills across engineering and leadership

Based in the US with
no visa sponsorship

If you do not tick every box above, this role is not the right fit.

The Opportunity

Optimal have partnered with a fast-growing, AI-driven technology company transforming a highly manual, outdated industry through automation and intelligent systems.

Backed by top-tier VCs and founded by deeply technical leaders from elite engineering backgrounds, the company is experiencing rapid traction and scaling its platform under real production load.

They are now hiring a Production Engineer to take full ownership of infrastructure, deployment, and reliability - ensuring the platform scales safely, quickly, and predictably as the business grows.

This is an engineering-first role, sitting at the intersection of backend development, platform engineering, and reliability.

Core Focus Areas

Production Reliability & Infrastructure Ownership

• Own uptime, availability, and resilience of production services

• Design and implement self-healing systems

• Improve fault tolerance and system reliability through code

• Lead incident response and post-mortems with a prevention mindset

CI/CD & Developer Enablement

• Architect and maintain robust CI/CD pipelines

• Enable safe, reversible, and frequent deployments

• Build internal tooling that makes the right way to deploy the easiest way

• Improve deployment speed, confidence, and observability

Backend & Platform Engineering

• Write backend code to support infrastructure, tooling, and automation

•
Manage databases including performance tuning, backups, and compliance

• Support AI and human-in-the-loop pipelines with production-grade systems

• Partner closely with product engineers to unblock delivery

Observability & Monitoring

• Build and maintain monitoring and alerting systems

• Improve system visibility using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog

• Ensure teams can quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve issues in production

Ideal Background

• Backend or production engineer with strong infrastructure ownership

• Python-heavy engineering background

• Strong, hands-on GCP experience in live production environments

• Experience in startup or high-growth environments

• Deep understanding of CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and system reliability

• Comfortable operating under ambiguity with minimal process

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability for production systems

Working Model

On-site:
San Francisco (5 days per week)

Early-stage, high-ownership environment with a strong engineering bar and real production responsibility.

If this opportunity aligns with your background and you meet all the criteria above, reach out to Optimal for an immediate and confidential conversation.