Senior Infrastructure Engineer - San Francisco

Overview

Polymath Robotics is creating software that can safely control all of the world's industrial vehicles, and we're looking for a Senior Infrastructure Engineer to join our team. We're a small, close-knit group of roughly 20 people — each of us experts in our fields — working to bring autonomous vehicles to mining, agriculture, defense, and other industries quickly. We believe robotics and autonomy are at a tipping point, similar to how the PC industry reshaped the world in the 80s, and we need your help.

As our Senior Infrastructure Engineer, you'll help build and scale the backbone of the system that powers our robot fleet — from the laptops on our team's desks to the cloud services our robots depend on in the field. This is a genuinely multi-hat role. We're looking for someone who has worked across several of these areas — ideally in a startup where the job requires creative problem solving and strong ownership — and is energized by that kind of range.

Responsibilities

• Manage and automate IT and systems administration — endpoint provisioning, configuration management (Chef), user lifecycle, and fleet state enforcement across corporate and robot hardware.
• Own and evolve our cloud infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi/Terraform) — spin up, configure, and maintain services on Digital Ocean and cloud providers programmatically, never through a GUI.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines — deploy tokens, artifact storage, automated provisioning of build infrastructure, and release workflows that keep our engineering team moving fast.
• Manage networking across corporate and remote robot sites — VLANs, PepLink/cellular/satellite connectivity, VPN (Tailscale), and end-to-end diagnostics when things go wrong in the field.
• Harden our security posture — SSH key management, secrets rotation, automatic deprovisioning, attack surface reduction across cloud VMs and connected devices.
• Own observability — Grafana, Prometheus, and alerting pipelines that surface problems before our robots or our team feel them.
• Collaborate with robotics and software teams to ensure infrastructure scales as deployed vehicles increase.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate has worn several of these hats before — not necessarily all of them, but more than one. Startup experience where you were handed problems outside your job title is a strong signal. Here's what we're looking for:

• Hands-on experience across multiple infrastructure disciplines: IT/sysadmin, cloud IaC, CI/CD, networking, or security
• Experience in a startup or small team where roles were fluid and you owned things end-to-end
• 3+ years in infrastructure, DevOps, IT engineering, or a closely related field
• Proven track record with distributed systems, containers (Kubernetes/Podman), and cloud infrastructure.
• Deep knowledge of Prometheus, PostgreSQL, and data pipeline design.
• Experience integrating observability and monitoring into CI/CD workflows.
• Solid grasp of security, networking, and service interconnect patterns.
• Strong automation instincts — if you've done something twice, it's a script; if it's a script, it's versioned
• Comfort working across Linux, cloud services, and networked systems
• Scripting proficiency in Python, Bash, or equivalent
• Self-directed and high-ownership — you close the ticket, you don't wait to be asked twice
• Bonus: experience with robotics environments, ROS, or edge/embedded systems

Why Join Polymath Robotics?

• Mission that matters: The vehicles we automate operate in places no human should have to be — e.g., steel mills with molten slag, fertilizer plants thick with chemical dust etc. Removing people from such unsafe environments is our mission.
• Collaborative environment: Work alongside a tight-knit group of ~20 people, each expert in their field, on collaborative projects.
• Hybrid workplace: Enjoy the flexibility of a hybrid work model, with engineering based in our SF Mission office three days a week, giving a good balance of maker time and synchronization time.
• Open source advocacy: We strongly support open-source robotics efforts, and your work can be shareable and publishable wherever possible.
• Humor & passion: We might occasionally be a bunch of rosbags, but our passion and humor drive us to accelerate the realization of autonomous vehicles in the industry.

Application Process:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their resume, and any relevant portfolio or project links. A cover letter is optional, but always appreciated.

Polymath Robotics is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We don’t look for a “cultural fit”, we look for people who add to the culture.

Interview Process

Ideally we want to get through this process in 1 week, 2 worst case:

1. Intro call - 30 mins on Zoom
2. Technical Interview - 1 hr on Zoom or in person
3. Team Meet & Great - 1 hr in person, usually around lunch
   • Can be combined with Technical Interview
4. Founders Call - 30 mins on Zoom or in person