Software Engineer — Developer Platform - Now Hiring

Cobalt Assembly

Build, ship, and operate software with confidence.

Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Industry: Cloud infrastructure and developer tools

Cobalt Assembly develops a cloud platform that helps engineering teams build, deploy, monitor, and operate production software. Its customers include technology companies and large digital businesses that need reliable infrastructure without forcing every development team to manage complex cloud systems independently.

The company is recognized for technically demanding work, a high engineering bar, and products designed primarily for professional software developers.

Software Engineer — Developer Platform

Location: San Francisco, California
Work arrangement: Hybrid — four office days, with Friday available for remote work
Employment: Full-time, salaried and exempt
Schedule: Monday through Friday
Hours: Approximately 40–45 hours per week
Base salary: $180,000–$220,000, depending on experience, skills, and interview level
Annual cash bonus: Not offered for this position
Equity: Initial grant valued at approximately $160,000–$320,000 over four years
Estimated annualized compensation: $220,000–$300,000 at the initial grant-date equity value
Reports to: Engineering Manager, Developer Platform
On-call: Approximately one week every ten weeks

The role

Cobalt Assembly is hiring a Software Engineer to build the tools and services that other engineering teams use to develop, test, deploy, and monitor production applications.

You will work on internal APIs, deployment workflows, developer tooling, and shared cloud infrastructure. This is a mid-level individual-contributor position with ownership of meaningful projects, but it does not include direct reports.

What you’ll do

• Build services and APIs that support application deployment, configuration, and production operations.
• Improve developer workflows from local development through testing and release.
• Design reliable systems for service discovery, permissions, deployment history, and configuration management.
• Work with product engineers to identify recurring development problems and turn them into reusable platform capabilities.
• Improve platform observability, automated testing, documentation, and operational readiness.
• Investigate production incidents and implement changes that prevent similar failures.
• Review code and technical proposals from engineers across the company.
• Participate in architecture discussions and document important technical decisions.
• Join the platform on-call rotation after completing onboarding and readiness training.

What we’re looking for

• At least three years of professional software engineering experience.
• Production experience with Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, or another modern programming language.
• Experience building backend services, APIs, or internal developer tools.
• Working knowledge of relational databases and distributed-system fundamentals.
• Understanding of testing, code review, version control, and continuous delivery.
• Ability to diagnose problems using logs, metrics, traces, and production data.
• Clear written and verbal communication.
• Experience owning a project from initial design through production release.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related discipline is helpful but not required.

Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, CI/CD systems, or developer-platform engineering is helpful but not required.

Technology

The platform primarily uses Go, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Terraform, and AWS. Candidates do not need experience with the entire stack and will receive time to learn unfamiliar components.

Compensation and equity

The base salary is determined by relevant experience, technical scope, interview performance, and internal leveling.

This position does not include an annual cash bonus. Instead, employees receive an equity grant that normally vests over four years, subject to the company’s equity plan and continued employment.

The stated equity value is calculated at the time of the grant. Its future value may increase or decrease and is not guaranteed. Equity should not be treated as cash salary.

Benefits

• Health and wellbeing: Company-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees; dependent coverage subsidy; mental-health support; life and disability insurance.
• Retirement and financial: 401(k) with a 4% company match, pre-tax commuter benefits, and access to financial-planning resources.
• Time away and family: 20 days of annual PTO, company holidays, paid sick leave, and 16 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Professional development: $3,000 annual learning budget, conference support, technical mentorship, and dedicated engineering-learning days.
• Office and work support: Company laptop and home-office equipment, lunch on office days, commuter reimbursement, and relocation assistance when approved.

Eligibility and complete plan terms are provided in the official benefits documentation.

Schedule and on-call expectations

Most collaboration takes place between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Engineers may arrange the remainder of their schedule with their manager.

After onboarding, the engineer joins an on-call rotation approximately once every ten weeks. On-call engineers respond to urgent platform incidents outside regular hours. When substantial overnight work is required, the following workday’s schedule is adjusted.

What success looks like

Within the first 90 days, you will understand the platform architecture, deliver a production contribution, and complete on-call readiness training.

Within six months, you should independently lead a platform improvement used by multiple engineering teams and demonstrate sound judgment during design reviews and production incidents.

Success is measured through reliability, adoption, developer experience, and long-term system quality—not the number of code changes submitted.

Culture

Cobalt Assembly combines high technical standards with a practical approach to engineering. Employees are expected to challenge unclear requirements, explain tradeoffs, and take responsibility for the systems they operate.

The team prefers simple, well-understood solutions over unnecessary novelty. Code reviews are direct but respectful, and engineers are expected to share knowledge rather than protect individual areas of ownership.

Hiring process

• A 30-minute introductory call with a member of the Engineering Recruiting team.
• A 60-minute collaborative coding interview in a shared development environment.
• A technical interview covering backend fundamentals, debugging, and production reliability.
• A system-design conversation based on a realistic developer-platform problem.
• A final conversation with the Engineering Manager and two prospective teammates.
• Final reference and employment-verification checks, followed by a conditional written offer.

Required qualifications:

• Legally authorized to work in the United States
• 18 years or older