VP of Engineering

Gray Swan

. Lead, mentor, and develop a team of infrastructure engineers .

Posted 9/18/2026full-timePittsburgh • Pennsylvania • United StatesLead💰 $255,000 - $315,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in leading and mentoring infrastructure engineering teams while driving the design and operation of scalable backend services and cloud infrastructure. Proficient in establishing technical direction, improving system performance, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to support complex AI workloads.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Infrastructure Engineering LeadershipCloud Infrastructure ManagementDistributed Systems DesignProgramming in C/C++, Go, Python, Rust, or JavaKubernetes Operations

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Backend EngineeringDistributed SystemsAPI DesignMicroservices ArchitectureEvent-Driven ArchitectureObservability PracticesPerformance OptimizationIncident ResponseTechnical Strategy DevelopmentScalable Architecture

Soft Skills

Team DevelopmentCoachingFeedbackCommunicationDelegation

Tools & Technologies

AWSGCPAzureKubernetesNetworkingStorageComputeInfrastructure ToolingDeveloper Productivity SystemsMonitoring Tools

Industry Keywords

Enterprise SolutionsProduction EnvironmentsCloud PlatformsService OrchestrationReliabilitySecurityScalabilityFast-Moving Startup

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSAzureCloudDistributed SystemsGoogle Cloud PlatformJavaKubernetesMicroservicesPythonRustC++Go

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead, mentor, and develop a team of infrastructure engineers
Set technical direction and priorities for enterprise solutions
Oversee design, development, and operation of highly available backend services and distributed systems
Guide ownership and scaling of cloud infrastructure across Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Azure, networking, storage, and compute
Drive internal platform services, infrastructure tooling, and developer productivity systems
Establish and improve observability, monitoring, incident response, deployment, and operational excellence practices
Partner with machine learning, security, and product engineering teams to support complex AI workloads
Improve system performance, reliability, scalability, and infrastructure efficiency
Define long-term architecture and technical strategy
Participate in hiring and build an infrastructure engineering organization
Provide technical guidance during production incidents and lead post-incident reviews
Communicate infrastructure strategy, tradeoffs, risks, and priorities across engineering and company leadership
Submit a resume, portfolio link, and application answers
Participate in recruiter, technical or hiring manager, role-related assessment, culture, and reference-check interviews

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of experience building enterprise solutions with experience implementing backend infrastructure or distributed systems in production environments
2+ years of experience managing, mentoring, or leading software engineering teams
Strong technical background in infrastructure, distributed systems, backend engineering, or platform engineering
Strong programming experience in C/C++, Go, Python, Rust, Java, or a similar language
Experience operating production services on Kubernetes and modern cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure
Deep understanding of networking, distributed systems, containers, service orchestration, and scalable architectures
Experience designing and operating APIs, microservices, asynchronous systems, and event-driven architectures
Strong understanding of reliability, observability, security, and performance at scale
Comfortable debugging production systems alongside the team
Strong people leadership, coaching, feedback, and team development skills
Ability to balance technical depth with delegation and team leadership
Willingness to work in a fast-moving startup with significant ownership and ambiguity
Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates

Benefits

Comp & perks

Performance based bonus
Meaningful equity package
401k with up to 4% matching
28 days annual leave (vacation + holidays)
Health, dental, and vision coverage
Catered lunches (Pittsburgh office)
Flexible work arrangements
Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates