Founding Engineer (equity)
WFA Digital Insight
The demand for skilled cloud infrastructure engineers is on the rise, with Europe's cloud market expected to grow by 25% in the next two years. As a founding engineer at enum GmbH, you'll be at the forefront of building a European cloud platform from the ground up. With the company's focus on bare metal hardware and large-scale infrastructure, this role is ideal for those with experience in cloud providers, hosting companies, or large-scale infrastructure operations. Candidates should be prepared to demonstrate their expertise in designing and operating complex systems, as well as their ability to communicate technical ideas effectively. With the right skills and experience, this role offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on the European cloud landscape.
Job Description
About the Role
As a Founding Engineer at enum GmbH, you will be part of the core engineering team responsible for building and operating the company's cloud platform on bare metal hardware. This is a unique opportunity to work on a large-scale infrastructure project, designing and evolving the core platform infrastructure, including compute, storage, networking, and tenant isolation. You will be working directly with the founder and the core engineering team, making architecture decisions that shape the platform for years to come.The role entails a high level of ownership and responsibility, with the expectation that you will write production-ready code in Go and Rust, and take ownership of the results. You will also be responsible for reviewing and challenging the existing architecture, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes to ensure the platform's scalability and reliability.
The team at enum GmbH is small and agile, with a focus on delivering high-quality results quickly. As a founding engineer, you will be expected to contribute to this culture, working closely with the team to design, implement, and operate the cloud platform.
What You Will Do
- Design and evolve core platform infrastructure, including compute, storage, networking, and tenant isolation
- Write production-ready Go code for the control plane, reconcilers, and API services
- Work on distributed storage architecture and scaling using Ceph/RADOS
- Work on network design for multi-tenant isolation and multi-region expansion
- Work on Kubernetes control plane internals and cluster lifecycle management
- Review and challenge the existing architecture, identifying areas for improvement
- Implement changes to ensure the platform's scalability and reliability
- Mentor a strong engineer who is learning fast but hasn't operated infrastructure at this scale before
- Help make architecture decisions that hold up under growth, not just under demo load
- Write Engineering Requirement Documents to take something from idea to defined tasks, to implementation, to monitoring its success
What We Are Looking For
- Experience working at a cloud provider, hosting company, or large-scale infrastructure operation
- Experience building application-level infrastructure code in Go, Rust, gRPC, reconcilers, or APIs
- Experience delivering projects from scratch, leading them, scaling them, and replacing them when necessary
- Experience designing systems that survive growth, multi-tenant, multi-region, high availability, and failure-domain thinking
- Experience communicating clearly using docs, RFCs, or architecture decision records to break up and deliver large tasks
- Experience being on-call and owning production
- Experience operating with agency and urgency
- Experience building confidence to say no to 99% of things and delivering the 1% that matter
- Experience with distributed storage in production, such as Ceph
- Experience with network architecture at the fabric level, such as EVPN/VXLAN, BGP, Anycast, and multi-tenant network design
Nice to Have
- Experience with Kubernetes internals, including control plane, CNI, and multi-tenancy
- Experience with infrastructure software in Go or Rust, including control planes, reconcilers, and platform tooling
- Experience with bare metal operations, PXE, hardware lifecycle, and datacenter environments
Benefits and Perks
- Founding Engineer title and the opportunity to build the company from the ground up
- Competitive salary and VSOP equity participation
- Remote-first work culture, with the flexibility to work from anywhere in the EU
- Hardware of your choice, with no restrictions on the tools you need to do your job
- No layers of management, with direct access to the founders and the opportunity to make a real impact
- Ambitious mission to build the European public cloud platform and compete with hyperscalers
- Bootstrapped company with a strong focus on innovation and delivering high-quality results
How to Stand Out
- Tip: Make sure to highlight your experience with large-scale infrastructure projects and your ability to design and operate complex systems.
- Tip: Be prepared to demonstrate your expertise in Go and Rust, and your experience with distributed storage and networking.
- Tip: Show your passion for building and operating cloud platforms, and your willingness to take ownership of your work.
- Tip: Be prepared to discuss your experience with Kubernetes, Ceph, and other relevant technologies.
- Tip: Highlight your ability to communicate technical ideas effectively, and your experience with documentation and architecture decision records.
- Tip: Be prepared to discuss your experience with on-call and production ownership, and your ability to operate with agency and urgency.
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