Feeny
Altara

Software Engineer, Infrastructure at Altara (San Francisco, CA)

Altara· San Francisco, CA·

Role details

Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time

Job description

We’re building the scientific intelligence platform for the physical world, to accelerate breakthroughs in semiconductors, batteries, advanced materials, aerospace, and beyond. These industries represent trillions in spend, but are still trapped in outdated software. We’re changing that by building the intelligence layer to help scientists and engineers move faster and solve core problems -- R&D through manufacturing.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a category-defining company at the intersection of AI and the physical sciences. And we’re building a world-class team to do it.

We recently raised a seed round led by Greylock, with participation from Neo, BoxGroup, Liquid 2, and top angels including Jeff Dean + leadership at OpenAI and AMD. Our team (ex-Applied Intuition, Glean, SpaceX, Warp, Jane Street, Verkada) works in-person in San Francisco. Our office is located walking distance from 4th and King Caltrain station.

What you’ll do:

  • Architect and own complex customer-hosted cloud deployments that run scalably and reliably across diverse customer environments.
  • Triage, debug, and resolve high-severity issues end-to-end, building bulletproof automated safeguards and observability to permanently prevent regressions.
  • Design fully automated, repeatable deployment pipelines with deep observability to proactively surface edge cases before they hit production.
  • Drive developer velocity and build internal tooling that empower the engineering team to ship fast without sacrificing reliability or security.

We would love to meet you if you have experience:

  • Operating production Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure.
  • Delivering on-prem or customer-hosted software
  • Strong Linux, networking and infrastructure-as-code fundamentals
  • Independently owning incidents and communicating with customers
  • Working with the following key technologies:
  • - Public cloud/AWS etc, Managed Kubernetes knowledge, IaC tools like Terraform
  • GitOps/Argo CD, Linux, networking, IAM and observability tooling
  • On-prem deployment; air-gapped experience is a bonus

Bonus points if you have:

  • Worked at an early stage startup, founded a company, or plan to start one someday.
  • Air-gapped or restricted-network deployment experience
  • Multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud or enterprise security experience
  • Experience supporting data/AI infrastructure
  • Experience or deep curiosity in science.

Learn More about Altara

Why work at Altara

  • Early-stage impact: Only ~9 employees – new hires will shape the product, culture, and direction from the ground up.
  • Hard technical challenges: Work on one of the “hardest and most consequential problems in technology” (Greylock) – bridging AI with real-world lab and fab data.
  • Founding team: Backed by top-tier VC (Greylock) and led by two Harvard CS grads with rare combined expertise in AI and physical sciences.
  • Open roles (as of mid-2026): Founding GTM, Research Engineer, Chief of Staff, Design Engineer, Software Engineer – posted on LinkedIn and likely on jobs.gem.com.
  • Culture: Described as high-speed, ambitious, and focused on real-world breakthroughs. Likely in-person in San Francisco (no explicit remote/hybrid policy stated).
  • Perks: Not detailed, but typical for a well-funded seed startup (equity, meaningful ownership, direct access to founders).

Application questions