Platform Infrastructure Engineer, Security-Leaning

Company Overview

Pronoia Energy is a pioneering deep tech startup at the forefront of quantum energy storage innovation. As a lean, mission-driven team, we thrive on rapid prototyping, cross-disciplinary collaboration and solving complex engineering challenges to turn quantum physics into practical, scalable products. Our current focus is on developing our groundbreaking room-temperature macroscopic quantum energy storage technology that promises orders of magnitude greater energy density, faster charging, and higher power delivery as well as being cheaper and safer compared to existing battery technology. This represents a paradigm shift in energy storage with applications spanning consumer electronics, electric vehicles, renewable grids, and beyond.

Role Summary

To meet our ambitious goals we are building an internal, grounded, agentic AI system that accelerates our research, and we are hiring a Platform and Infrastructure Engineer to build the body and nervous system it runs on. This is a foundational, high-reward role for someone who makes a system both reliable and locked-down at the same time. In this role you will turn our owned hardware, an on-premises AI computer and database, into a real working platform: reliable local model serving, an on-prem database that serves as both the search index and the provenance and audit store, and a sandboxed execution environment where AI-generated code runs without reaching the internet or touching sensitive data. The single most important instruction in this role is to bake trust‑boundary discipline into the codebase from day one, so that hardening it into a fully locked‑down enclave later is a migration, not a rewrite. This role is onsite in Torrance, California.

Key Responsibilities

• Build reliable local model serving and data infrastructure on owned, on‑premises hardware.
• Stand up a sandboxed code‑execution environment with default‑deny networking.
• Implement the provenance and audit store that records where every fact came from.
• Design the early system already shaped like the secure end‑state, with data‑classification and boundary discipline built in.
• Wear several hats as a founding generalist and later hand specialties to dedicated hires.

Required Qualifications

• Deep backend and systems engineering with genuine bare‑metal or on‑premises experience, not cloud‑only.
• Real sandboxing and untrusted‑code‑isolation depth, for example network namespaces, seccomp, or egress filtering.
• A security instinct that shows up as default‑deny defaults and auditable, versioned infrastructure.
• Comfort being a founding generalist who later hands specialties to dedicated hires.
• A self‑starter who thrives amid ambiguity and rapid iteration.

Preferred Qualifications

• A defense, aerospace, or regulated‑data background that makes the enclave mindset second nature.
• Experience running your own GPU fleet rather than renting cloud compute.
• Familiarity with containerization, orchestration, and GPU‑serving infrastructure.
• Prior work in deep tech R&D alongside interdisciplinary teams.

What We Offer

• Chance to solve one of the world's biggest engineering challenges and pioneer quantum energy storage.
• Competitive salary, equity in a transformative startup, and performance‑based incentives.
• Access to cutting‑edge labs, tools, and resources in a flexible, collaborative work environment.
• Comprehensive benefits: health insurance, unlimited PTO, professional development stipend, and relocation assistance if needed.
• A culture of innovation where your work will accelerate our path to market impact.

If you're excited to tackle this real‑world quantum problem and build the energy systems of the future, apply with your resume and cover letter detailing relevant projects.