Engineering Manager, Kubernetes Platform (LKS)

Location: Hybrid; presence required four days per week at the San Francisco, San Jose, or Bellevue office. Tuesday is the designated work-from-home day.

Salary: $330,000–$440,000 annually in San Francisco or San Jose; $297,000–$396,000 annually in Bellevue.

Company

Lambda builds AI cloud infrastructure for AI researchers, enterprises, and hyperscalers, with a mission to make compute broadly accessible.

What you will do

• Build and lead the LKS engineering team, hire engineers, develop technical leaders, and establish high standards for ownership and quality.
• Define the technical strategy and roadmap for Kubernetes platform capabilities and runtime.
• Deliver a reliable baseline cluster experience using upstream, CNCF-conformant Kubernetes.
• Own the qualification, compatibility, release lifecycle, and customer choice of managed add-ons.
• Build AI workload capabilities, starting with Slurm through Slinky and evaluating orchestration options such as Volcano and LLMD.
• Partner with Hosted Control Plane, Compute, Networking, Storage, IAM, Security, and Product teams on lifecycle management, upgrades, incident response, and secure integrations.

Requirements

• 9+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years leading engineering teams.
• Experience building or operating Kubernetes platforms, managed Kubernetes services, or container infrastructure.
• Strong technical judgment across Kubernetes, platform APIs, operators, and cluster lifecycle.
• Ability to balance extensibility, compatibility, security, reliability, and customer experience.
• Experience building strong teams and collaborating across engineering, product, and infrastructure organizations.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to turn ambiguous needs into pragmatic plans and results.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Experience with GPU operators, AI infrastructure, or GPU-aware Kubernetes.
• Experience with Slurm, Slinky, Volcano, LLMD, Kueue, Ray, or similar orchestration systems.
• Experience with Kubernetes networking, storage, upgrades, or managed add-on catalogs.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time role with generous cash and equity compensation.
• Health, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
• Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles.
• 401(k) plan with a 2% company match for USA employees.
• Flexible paid time off plan.