Software Engineer, Developer Experience (AI Infrastructure)

ABOUT SIFT Sift is the data infrastructure platform for hardware engineering teams. We turn high-frequency telemetry into engineering insights for mission-critical machines: rockets, satellites, autonomous vehicles, energy systems, and defense platforms. Founded by former SpaceX engineers, we are building the review and analysis layer for the AI era of physical systems. ABOUT THE ROLE Sift is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to build and own the developer infrastructure and testing environments that enable our engineers to ship software faster and with greater confidence. You'll design systems that allow engineers to spin up complete, production-like environments on demand to test changes, simulate real-world workloads, and validate correctness. As AI coding agents become increasingly integrated into development workflows, you'll build the infrastructure that enables these agents to independently test, debug, and validate the code they produce. Sift processes high-volume telemetry from complex hardware systems, making realistic testing environments particularly challenging. This is a foundational, high-ownership opportunity to architect and scale the infrastructure that powers how we develop, test, and ship software. IN THIS ROLE, YOU'LL:

• Design and build infrastructure that provisions isolated, production-like testing environments on demand, enabling engineers to validate changes against Sift's full application stack.
• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines, build systems, and deployment automation to make testing environments fast, reliable, and cost-efficient.
• Develop infrastructure that supports diverse testing workloads, including integration testing, correctness validation, load testing, and performance testing.
• Build tooling for realistic data generation and user behavior simulation to validate software under production-like conditions.
• Enable AI coding agents to interact with testing environments, execute tests, and validate code changes autonomously.
• Partner closely with engineering teams to understand developer needs, eliminate bottlenecks, and improve development velocity and software quality. THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING:
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant experience in developer infrastructure, test infrastructure, platform engineering, or developer tooling.
• Deep hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, build systems, and deploying applications to cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience building and automating developer infrastructure, deployment systems, or testing environments, with an understanding of scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Experience developing or optimizing CI/CD pipelines and automating infrastructure provisioning and deployments.
• Strong software engineering and programming skills, preferably in Go or Python.
• Ability to balance infrastructure performance, environment fidelity, reliability, and cost.
• Strong collaboration skills and a developer-focused mindset, with experience building tools that improve engineering productivity. BONUS POINTS:
• Experience building ephemeral or on-demand development and testing environments.
• Load testing, performance testing, or distributed test execution.
• Browser automation and end-to-end testing tools such as Playwright or Cypress.
• Building sandboxed execution environments or infrastructure supporting AI coding agents.
• Working on developer infrastructure at a fast-scaling technology company, cloud platform, or compute provider. ENGINEERING AT SIFT: You'll have the opportunity to help evolve and scale our platform because we're still in the early stages of building the product. Relevant technologies include:
• Web frontend & backend: ECharts, Go, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Protobuf, Radix, React, Redux, and TypeScript
• Data: Arrow, DataFusion, Flink, Parquet, and Rust
• Infrastructure: Argo CD, AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, Kubernetes, Kustomize, Linux, Prometheus, and Terragrunt LOCATION: Sift’s headquarters is in Marina Del Rey, CA (Next to LAX). We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—and come together for a full week every two months. We are open to relocating candidates to LA or working from our San Francisco office for the right candidate. Salary range: $180,000 - $230,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits. ELIGIBILITY: U.S. Person Required: Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) regulations.