Senior Cloud Engineer
Role Overview
This senior-level role involves architecting and managing scalable cloud infrastructure, focusing on designing systems, writing playbooks, and automating processes to enhance developer velocity. The engineer will work closely with engineering, platform, and security teams to define cloud-native patterns, enforce best practices, and implement AI-driven automation for observability and incident response. Key responsibilities include building CI/CD pipelines, owning Infrastructure as Code practices, and mentoring engineers on cloud best practices.
Perks & Benefits
The role is fully remote, likely with flexible hours and no strict time zone requirements, as implied by typical remote tech jobs. Benefits include equity, a 401(k) match, competitive compensation, medical/dental/vision coverage, mental health support, a wellness stipend, and a learning stipend for career growth. Additional perks cover paid parental leave, fertility benefits, flexible PTO, and team outings, fostering a supportive and collaborative culture.
Full Job Description
About Handshake
Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions.
In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month.
Why join Handshake now:
Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel
Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders
Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue
About the Role
As a Senior Cloud Engineer, you'll be at the center of how we design, deploy, and evolve our cloud infrastructure. You'll work closely with engineering, platform, and security teams to define patterns that scale — and make it genuinely easy for developers to do the right thing. You'll codify best practices, champion automation, and bring a modern, opinionated perspective on how cloud-native infrastructure should work.
This isn't a "keep the lights on" role. You'll be architecting systems, writing the playbooks others follow, and pushing us toward a more intelligent, automated infrastructure future.
What You'll Do
Architect and manage scalable, reliable cloud infrastructure across our production and development environments
Define and enforce best practices for cloud deployments, making it easy for teams to ship safely and confidently
Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (we use Buildkite) and GitOps workflows with ArgoCD to streamline how code gets from commit to production
Own and evolve our Infrastructure as Code practices using Terraform, Crossplane, or similar IaC tooling
Drive platform improvements that reduce toil and increase developer velocity
Explore and implement AI-driven approaches to infrastructure automation, observability, and incident response
Partner with engineering teams to design systems that are cloud-native from the ground up
Mentor engineers across the organization on cloud best practices and patterns
Desired Capabilities
Deep hands-on experience with GCP (strongly preferred), AWS, or Azure — you've run production workloads at scale and know where the bodies are buried
Strong proficiency with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform or experience with Crossplane or similar policy-driven IaC
Fluency with modern CI/CD tooling — Buildkite, GitHub Actions, or similar — and a strong GitOps mindset with tools like ArgoCD or Flux
Experience designing container-based and Kubernetes-native architectures
A genuine curiosity about applying AI and automation to infrastructure problems — whether that's smarter alerting, self-healing systems, or LLM-assisted runbooks
Strong communication skills — you can explain a complex architectural decision to an engineer and an executive alike
A collaborative spirit and a bias toward documentation, standards, and shared ownership
Extra Credit
Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization
Background in platform engineering or developer experience (DX)
Exposure to Cloud Security practices, and experience with IAM, SIEM, scanning, etc.
Experience with service mesh architectures (Istio, Linkerd)
Perks
Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life.
The below benefits are for full-time US employees.
🎯 Ownership: Equity in a fast-growing company
💰 Financial Wellness: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching
🍼 Family Support: Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching
💝 Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, wellness stipend
📚 Growth: Learning stipend, ongoing development
💻 Remote & Office: Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office
🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days
🤝 Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses
Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.
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