---
title: 'Staff DevOps Engineer at what3words'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-devops-engineer-what3words-vietnam-nbs4fx56vr5e'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-04'
---

# Staff DevOps Engineer at what3words

- **Company:** what3words
- **Location:** Vietnam
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-04
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/what3words/4ba7ab50-ccbe-45cd-940b-160b93c15c40

## Job description

Our mission is to become the global standard for addressing. Street addresses weren’t designed for 2026. They aren’t accurate enough to specify building entrances, and they don’t exist for parks, rural areas and many parts of the world. This makes it hard to find places and causes problems and inefficiencies on a global scale.

That’s why we created what3words. We divided the world into 3m squares and gave each square a unique combination of three words. It’s the easiest way to find and share precise locations.

Over the last year, what3words has been used in 193 countries, and our monthly active users continue to grow at an impressive pace. Our tech is used by emergency services, delivery companies, eCommerce businesses, ride-hailing apps and NGOs, and is integrated into the navigation systems of millions of cars around the world.

The role:

At what3words, we're proud of our tech stack. We have built a massively scalable, microservices-based architecture, based around Kubernetes on AWS. You'll be exposed to technologies such as EKS, Terraform, Terragrunt, Istio, Karpenter, Flux, GitHub Actions, Prometheus, Grafana, Go, Python, Lambda and CloudFront — with a little GCP alongside.

Our DevOps team is deliberately broad: the team owns platform engineering, SRE, observability and security. The remit is wide and the ownership is end-to-end, so you'll carry work from the design call through to how it behaves in production.

You'll work closely with colleagues in our UK office, so you'll need to be effective asynchronously and comfortable making your case in writing.

Responsibilities:

- Own our infrastructure as code as a governed product rather than a pile of configuration — a versioned, tested module library with clear ownership, change control and automated quality gates.
- Build the self-service paths that let product teams provision what they need without waiting on us, then measure adoption and iterate until they're genuinely used.
- Make reliability a property of the delivery path rather than something inspected afterwards, with service level objectives, dashboards and alerting wired in by default.
- Shift Left Security approach for workflows — policy as code, least privilege and secure-by-default templates, so that our teams can build on a foundation of good decisions.
- Treat cloud cost as an engineering responsibility, with commitment and allocation decisions made deliberately.
- Take open-ended platform problems through to durable outcomes against multi-quarter goals, and write the design docs behind decisions that outlast any single project.
- Share an on-call rotation with the team, and improve how we alert and how we respond.

Essential Skills:

- Multi-account AWS: Substantial production experience running AWS at scale across multiple accounts, with the identity and networking discipline that goes with them.
- Kubernetes in Production: Deep, hands-on experience owning cluster lifecycle and version upgrades, tuning auto scaling under real load, and debugging the failures that follow.
- Advanced Terraform: You've authored and versioned modules other people depend on, made deliberate state-management decisions, and run an orchestration or automation layer on top.
- GitOps: Practical experience with declarative delivery, and a clear grasp of what reconciliation gives you and what it takes away when something is wrong.
- CI/CD as a Platform: A track record of owning the pipelines other engineers ship through, including self-hosted runners or build agents and the build times and failure modes that come with them.
- Observability & Incident Response: Experience managing alert systems that the team can trust and be well prepared to respond to and resolve.
- Automation & Security: Strong scripting skills (Shell, plus Python or Go), with least privilege, secrets handling and supply chain awareness built into platform defaults.
- AI tools: Experience and enthusiasm in leveraging Agentic AI workflows to improve developer experience.
- Soft Skills: Excellent communication in spoken and written English.

Diversity & Inclusion

Our mission is to help everyone talk about everywhere, and we believe diverse perspectives make for a better company and better products too. We strongly encourage applications from underrepresented groups and are committed to equality and inclusivity in our hiring processes and company culture.

## Benefits

We offer the following benefits to all permanent employees of what3words:

- Competitive salary
- Flexible working
- 6 week remote working (work from anywhere) policy
- 25 days holiday: plus the option to buy more!
- Share options
- Private health insurance
- Wellbeing Days
- Generous parental leave policies
- Family friendly policies
- Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
- Lunch & learn sessions
- Team social budget

## About what3words

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: what3words has divided the world into 3m × 3m squares and given each a unique three-word address, creating a global standard for precise location communication.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2013
- **Founders**: Chris Sheldrick (Co-founder & CEO), Jack Waley-Cohen (Co-founder & COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Location technology, geospatial data, software development
- **Target customers**: B2B (logistics, e-commerce, emergency services, NGOs, national infrastructure) and B2C (individuals using the free app)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “A global standard for precise location” – making it simple to talk about any precise location on Earth using three words.

## Products & Services
- **[Free App & Online Map]**: Browser-based map and mobile app allowing anyone to find, share, and navigate to what3words addresses. Works offline using GPS. Available in 60+ languages.
- **[what3words Pro]**: Premium tier with additional tools and features for power users (e.g., navigation integration with Uber, CityMapper, Waze; AI Chat and Voice Chat).
- **[API & SDK for Business]**: Commercial integration products for enterprises, logistics companies, and governments to embed precise location capabilities into their software. Free access for emergency services and NGOs.
- **[what3words for Business]**: Enterprise-grade solutions used by thousands of businesses to improve delivery accuracy, cut costs, and enhance customer experience.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **USD 147.8 million** across 21 rounds (latest venture round: USD 10 million on 2021-12-14 led by Brand Capital International; Series C in 2018; earlier rounds from investors including TURN8 and Future Fifty)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Brand Capital International (lead), TURN8, Future Fifty; partners include Uber, CityMapper, Waze; used by over 650 businesses, government organisations, and NGOs in 170+ countries.
- **Growth Signals**: 50 million+ app downloads; used in 193 countries; 57 trillion+ unique what3words addresses; 154 employees (though -7.6% YoY headcount decline as per latest data); operates in 29 countries.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Uniqueness**: No other system provides a consistent, human-friendly, three-word address for every 3m square on Earth – covering 57 trillion squares.
- **Offline first**: App works entirely offline via GPS, critical for remote areas or emergencies.
- **Precision & permanence**: Addresses are fixed to a 3m square, never change, and are not duplicated – unlike street addresses.
- **Multilingual**: Available in 60+ languages, enabling global adoption in native tongues.
- **Verbal & text friendly**: Easy to say, write, and type – unlike map pins or coordinates.

## Strategic Focus
- **Enterprise expansion**: Growing adoption among logistics, e-commerce, and infrastructure companies to drive operational efficiency.
- **Language & market coverage**: Continued rollout of new languages and localisation to increase global usage.
- **Integration ecosystem**: Deepening partnerships with navigation apps, mapping platforms, and enterprise software.
- **Emergency services & NGOs**: Providing free access to promote use in life-saving scenarios.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & ratings**: Rated 4.3/5 on LinkedIn (102+ reviews) with Work-Life 4.2, Compensation 4.0, and Culture 4.4.
- **Flexible work**: Hybrid/remote options available – many roles are listed as “Remote or Hybrid” (e.g., Atlanta, GA or London offices).
- **Global team**: Employees across 29 countries; 154 staff with a mix of technical, consulting, sales, and design roles.
- **Recent open roles**: Business Development Associates (Arabic, German, Korean, Japanese), Senior Front End Engineer, Mobile Automation Engineer.
- **Notable alumni destinations**: Google, Apple, Meta, Deliveroo – indicating strong talent development.
- **Meaningful mission**: Work on a product that solves a fundamental global problem – precise location for everyone.

## Sources
1. [what3words.com](https://what3words.com/en/about) – About us page
2. [what3words.com](https://what3words.com/) – Homepage
3. [LinkedIn](https://uk.linkedin.com/company/what3words) – Company profile, financials, headcount, funding
4. [Built In](https://builtin.com/company/what3words) – Careers, offices, culture summary
5. [Ashby Careers Page](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/what3words) – Current job postings

## Other roles at what3words

- [Mobile Automation QA Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mobile-automation-qa-engineer-what3words-vietnam-55frw4vb1knm) — Vietnam
- [Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-designer-what3words-vietnam-an12qtm0znjt) — Vietnam
- [Mobile Manual QA Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mobile-manual-qa-engineer-what3words-vietnam-cjdnp0zqmjzj) — Vietnam
- [Senior Engineer - Front End](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-engineer-front-end-what3words-vietnam-8e1x5c54eadv) — Vietnam
- [Frontend Automation QA Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/frontend-automation-qa-engineer-what3words-vietnam-gawrpf69w53m) — Vietnam
- [Business Development Associate - German Speaker](https://feeny.ai/job/business-development-associate-german-speaker-what3words-mongolia-3wnyz5ck9a7j) — Mongolia
- [Staff DevOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-devops-engineer-lean-technologies-dubai-04eqz8zxk6nt) — Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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