Cloud DevOps Engineer

Cloud DevOps EngineerYou'll build the cloud infrastructure that turns the open web into data — the platform beneath Firecrawl's crawling, scraping, and search products. We need engineers who can make that foundation — Kubernetes, storage, networking, deployments — fast, reliable, and cheap at web scale. You'll own real infrastructure from day one — not tickets in a backlog.Salary Range: $246,000–$271,000/yearEquity Range: Competitive equity — details shared during the process.Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite)Job Type: Full-TimeExperience: 5+ years in DevOps, Platform Engineering or Cloud InfrastructureVisa: Must be legally authorized to work in the United States. We're not able to sponsor visas right now, though that may change down the line.About FirecrawlFirecrawl is the easiest way to turn the web into data AI agents can use. One API call converts any URL into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data - the boring-hard problem everyone building with LLMs eventually hits, solved.We hit 8 figures in ARR in year one and more than doubled it in year two. We have 175k+ GitHub stars, and developers, agents, and category-defining AI companies build on us every day. Growth like this is rare, and we're just getting started.We're a small team punching far above our weight. Everyone here owns a real piece of the product and company, end to end, and runs it themselves - no hiding behind process or headcount.This is a place for people who want to work at the frontier: an AI company building the infrastructure other AI companies run on, not one bolting AI onto an existing product. We move fast, go deep, and are building the tools superintelligence will rely on to gather data from the web.What You'll DoDesign, build, and operate GCP and on-prem infrastructure behind Firecrawl's productsRun large stateful and high-throughput workloads on Kubernetes — search clusters, crawling fleets, queues, and databases — with zero-downtime upgradesOwn CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automations, and containerized deployments across the platformDrive down infrastructure cost per request while traffic and data volume growBuild the observability that keeps latency, throughput, and reliability predictable and define the SLIs, SLOs, and customer-facing SLAs we hold ourselves to.Build and support our enterprise controls — SSO/SAML, RBAC, audit logging, tenant isolation, private networking, and the infrastructure behind SOC 2 and customer security reviewsWork directly with product and search engineers to productionize new services, retrieval, and ML workloadsOwn the incident lifecycle with engineers — from on-call and triage process to postmortems and resolution.What We're Looking ForYou've operated stateful distributed systems on Kubernetes at real scale — not just stateless servicesYou have deep experience with a major cloud (e.g. GCP, AWS, Azure), Docker, and Terraform; MLOps or ML-serving infrastructure experience (GPU workloads, model deployment pipelines) is a plusYou've run large-scale, data-heavy systems in production — search platforms, crawling or ingestion pipelines, or comparable. Hands-on experience operating Vespa is a strong plus.You care about latency, cost, and reliability in equal measureExperience with security and compliance infrastructure (SSO/SAML, audit logging, network isolation, SOC 2) is a strong plus — especially for the Core Platform focusYou're comfortable owning ambiguous problems and turning them into shipped infrastructureWhat We're NOT Looking ForSomeone who needs a fully-specced ticket to startSomeone who wants to specialize narrowly and hand off everything elseSomeone who optimizes for process over shippingA Note On PaceWe operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever. If that excites you, keep reading. If it doesn't, no hard feelings — but this role probably isn't for you.Benefits & PerksAvailable to all employeesSalary that makes sense — $246,000–$271,000/year, based on impact, not tenureOwn a piece — Gain competitive equity in what you're helping buildGenerous PTO — 15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded); take the time you need to rechargeParental leave — 12 weeks fully paid, for all parentsWellness stipend — $100/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you humanLearning & Development — Expense up to $1,000/year toward anything that helps you grow professionallyTeam offsites — A change of scenery, minus the trust fallsSabbatical — 3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and newAvailable to US-based full-time employeesFull coverage, no red tape — Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for spouse/kids) — no weird loopholes, just care that worksLife & Disability insurance — Employer-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance — coverage for life's curveballsSupplemental options — Optional accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and voluntary life insurance for extra peace of mindDoctegrity telehealth — Talk to a doctor from your couch401(k) plan — Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank youPre-tax benefits — Access to FSAs and commuter benefits (US-only) to help your wallet out a bitPet insurance — Because fur babies are family tooAvailable to SF-based employeesSF HQ perks — Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energyE-Bike transportation — A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on usInterview ProcessApplication Review — Send us your work and a quick note on why this excites you. Show us what you've built — clusters you've run, pipelines you've automated, incidents you've tamed. We care about what you've shipped, not where you went to school.Intro Chat (~25 min) — A quick conversation to get to know each other before we go deep. We'll talk about what you've been working on, what drew you to Firecrawl, and what you're looking for in your next role. Time for your questions too.Technical Chat (~45 min) — We'll dig into a real problem from our world examples include: running stateful clusters on Kubernetes, scaling a index fleet under growing traffic, or driving down cost per request — and talk through how you'd approach it. Come ready to think out loud; we care how you reason, not whether you memorized the answer.Founder Chat (~25 min) — Culture, pace, ownership, and how you like to work. Time for your questions too.Paid Work Trial (1-2 weeks) — Work with the team on a real, scoped piece of the product — paid at a contractor rate. It's the truest signal for both sides: you see what building at Firecrawl actually feels like, and we see how you ship. Remote-friendly, and we'll flex around your current commitments.Decision — We move fast after the trial.If you want to build the infrastructure that turns the whole web into data at a cost that shouldn't be possible, you should join us.Apply now.