Senior Software Engineer - DevOps/SRE
Project44 · Chicago, United States · 15d ago
Why project44?
At project44, we believe in better.
We challenge the status quo because we know a better supply chain isn’t just possible—it’s essential. Better for our customers. Better for their business. Better for the world.
With our Decision Intelligence Platform, Movement, we’re redefining how global supply chains operate. By transforming fragmented logistics data into real-time, AI-powered insights, we empower companies to connect instantly, see clearly, act decisively, and automate intelligently. Our Supply Chain AI enhances visibility, drives smarter execution, and unlocks next-gen applications that keep businesses moving forward.
Headquartered in Chicago, IL with a 2nd HQ in Bengaluru, India we are powered by a diverse global team that is tackling the toughest logistics challenges with innovation, urgency, and purpose.
AI at project44
We expect every project44 team member, regardless of role or function, to actively leverage AI in their day-to-day work. Whether you're building product, serving customers, managing people, or running operations, AI is a tool you're expected to use with intent, curiosity, and judgment. We don't expect everyone to be a data scientist. We do expect everyone to be an intelligent user of AI: able to identify where it adds value, direct it effectively, evaluate outputs critically, and govern it responsibly. We invest in our team's AI fluency because we believe it's a competitive advantage for every person at project44, not just our engineers
If you’re driven to solve meaningful problems, leverage AI to scale rapidly, drive impact daily, and be part of a high-performance team – we should talk.
The Role
Key Accountabilities: What you'll work on
- Design, build, and operate core infrastructure across our primary GCP environment and secondary AWS footprint, leveraging managed services to deliver scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solutions
- Own and evolve our Kubernetes (GKE) platform—cluster lifecycle management, node pool strategy, networking, RBAC, and workload reliability—ensuring developer teams can ship safely and quickly
- Build and maintain Terraform-based infrastructure-as-code across cloud environments, enforcing standards for modularity, state management, and repeatable, auditable provisioning
- Manage and improve our Kafka and Strimzi streaming infrastructure, supporting high-throughput event pipelines that are foundational to project44's real-time data capabilities
- Lead and execute cost optimization initiatives—rightsizing compute, improving resource utilization, reducing waste, and creating visibility and accountability for cloud spend across engineering teams
- Champion observability and reliability practices — SLOs/SLIs, incident response, on-call processes, and postmortems — to reduce MTTR and prevent recurrence.
- Partner with application engineering teams to define and implement platform standards for deployment, scaling, service mesh, secrets management, and infrastructure security
- Participate in a team on-call rotation, debugging and resolving infrastructure and platform incidents with urgency and rigor
- Contribute to technical design discussions, architecture reviews, and documentation—helping set a high bar for quality, reliability, and operational excellence across the engineering organization
- Mentor and support other engineers through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance
- Evaluate and introduce new tools, platforms, and automation to continuously modernize the infrastructure stack.
- Drive cost-optimization initiatives across cloud spend without compromising reliability or performance.
Qualities
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain infrastructure decisions through design docs, postmortems, and cross-functional discussions, and collaborate effectively with both technical and non-technical partners
- A strong analytical approach to problem-solving, with comfort navigating ambiguity and making tradeoffs explicit—especially across reliability, velocity, and cost
- A sense of ownership, curiosity, and resilience—comfortable voicing ideas, incorporating feedback, and iterating toward better solutions
- A platform-minded builder who thinks about the engineers and systems they enable, not just the infrastructure they manage
Qualifications
- 5+ years of professional experience in platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, DevOps, or a closely related role
Strong experience in:
- Kubernetes administration and operations at scale (GKE strongly preferred), including cluster networking, autoscaling, workload isolation, and upgrade management
- Kafka operations and architecture, including topic design, consumer group management, broker configuration, and integration with streaming workloads (Strimzi experience a plus)
- Infrastructure-as-code using Terraform—module design, state management, CI-driven plan/apply workflows, and drift detection
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core services: GKE, GCS, Cloud NAT, VPC networking, IAM, Artifact Registry, and related managed services
- Cloud observability tooling and practices—building meaningful dashboards, alerts, SLI/SLO frameworks, and runbooks regardless of the tool stack
- Cloud networking fundamentals: VPCs, subnetting, private connectivity, DNS, load balancing, and security group/firewall design
- Cloud cost management: identifying and executing on optimization opportunities, building spend visibility, and influencing engineering behavior around resource efficiency
Desirable and helpful (but not necessary):
- Experience with AWS services alongside a primary GCP environment
- Scripting or automation in Python, Go, Bash, or similar for operational tooling
- Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) or advanced Kubernetes networking (Cilium, Calico)
- Familiarity with CI/CD systems and GitOps patterns (ArgoCD, Flux, or similar)
- Experience building or operating developer platform capabilities (internal developer platforms, golden paths, self-service provisioning)
- Using AI-assisted development tools for infrastructure automation, runbook generation, or operational tooling (e.g., Claude, GitHub Copilot, or similar)
Work Authorization: Candidates must be authorized to work in the US without current or future employer-sponsored visa support.
In-office Commitment: Our office is where ideas spark, connections thrive, and innovation comes alive. We are looking for candidates who are enthusiastic and committed to joining our team on-site,in our beautiful headquarters 3 days a week. Together, we’re building something extraordinary—learn, grow, and thrive in our fast-paced, transformative environment.
We continually evaluate our pay ranges to reflect skills, experience, and market conditions. The base salary offered will be determined by assessing a candidate's experience and skills relative to the scope and responsibilities of the position, as well as the specific geographic location where the job will be performed. Base salary is one component of project44's total compensation package, which also includes stock options for all EOR and project44-employed team members, bonus or commission eligibility depending on role, and a benefits package tailored to your country of employment. Specific benefits package offerings vary by country and may include health, dental, and vision coverage, retirement plans, and paid time off, in line with local market standards and statutory programs. The base salary range for this position is USD 130,000 – USD 190,000
Diversity & Inclusion
At project44, we're designing the future of how the world moves. As we work to deliver a truly world-class product, we're intentionally building teams that reflect the unique communities we serve. We're focused on creating a company where all team members can bring their authentic selves to work every day.
project44 is an equal opportunity employer. If you share our values and passion for the future of logistics, we'd love to review your application. Even if you don't meet 100% of the requirements, please consider applying — studies show you can still be a strong candidate at 50%.
For any accommodation needed during the hiring process, please email recruiting@project44.com.