Lead Software Engineer (Kubernetes)

Location: Illinois, United States; hybrid/remote

Salary: $150,000–$224,000 annually, plus annual performance bonus and long-term incentives

Company

hirify.global develops AI-powered cloud software for legal data intelligence, supporting litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, and other high-stakes legal work.

What you will do

• Lead the design, development, and operation of distributed, scalable, secure full-stack cloud services processing petabytes of data weekly.
• Provide technical direction across frontend, backend, data, and system architecture, collaborating with staff and principal engineers.
• Own Kubernetes platform capabilities including cluster lifecycle, workload scheduling, infrastructure automation, and cloud-native architecture.
• Drive service reliability through observability, on-call practices, incident response, root cause analysis, and capacity management.
• Partner with engineering teams to onboard workloads and translate reliability and scale requirements into reusable platform capabilities.
• Mentor engineers, establish engineering standards, and align execution with product strategy and delivery commitments.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience designing, building, and operating cloud-native systems.
• Hands-on experience with distributed, multi-tenant systems and production Kubernetes, including cluster lifecycle, workload scheduling, and infrastructure as code.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud networking, and security in multi-tenant environments.
• Experience owning CI/CD, observability, and service reliability.
• Ability to set technical direction, lead teams, mentor engineers, and communicate effectively.
• Strong product and systems thinking, balancing delivery speed with long-term sustainability.

Nice to have

• Experience with Azure, AKS, multi-cluster fleets, and commercial or government cloud environments.
• Experience guiding UI, architecture, or data platform design.
• Experience in regulated or large-scale environments and highly distributed organizations.
• Familiarity with GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Claude Code.
• Experience with infrastructure automation tooling and prior people-lead or technical-lead responsibilities.

Culture & Benefits

• Continuous delivery, strong observability, and end-to-end service ownership.
• Exposure across distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and AI-enabled workflows.
• Health and retirement programs, wellness resources, and discretionary time off.
• Parental leave, two annual company breaks, home office stipend, and equity program.
• Volunteer opportunities and company-sponsored charitable programs.