Staff Engineer, Compute Foundation

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

The Compute Foundation group builds and operates the core systems that enable every Stripe engineer to ship code, configuration, and infrastructure changes safely and at high velocity. Embedded on the Imaging team, you will design, build, and distribute Linux machine images; manage host bootstrapping and OS-configuration systems; oversee OS packages and security-patching infrastructure; and provide platforms that empower service teams to safely run workloads across cloud providers and regions.

What it asks for · 7

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a demonstrated track record of designing and shipping production infrastructure systems of significant scale and complexity.
• Proven ability to lead large, ambiguous infrastructure projects end-to-end - from technical design through delivery - including managing cross-team dependencies and coordinating migrations across many consuming teams.
• Deep expertise in Linux systems, including boot and initialization, systems, processes, networking, filesystems, storage, packages, and production debugging. Strong foundations in cloud compute infrastructure, including machine images, virtual machines, autoscaling fleets, launch configuration, block storage, IAM, health evaluation, and multi-region operation in AWS, Azure, or an equivalent environment.
• Experience designing or operating fleet-scale image, host-management, configuration-management, or infrastructure-provisioning systems.
• Experience with safe infrastructure rollout practices, including automated validation, canarying, progressive rollout, health evaluation, rollback, and blast-radius containment.
• Strong background in service reliability and operational excellence: demonstrated ability to lead incident response, reduce toil, and build systems that are reliable, debuggable, and maintainable by a team.
• Track record of broad technical impact across multiple large systems: fluency across a complex codebase, force- multiplier effect through code review and mentorship, and the ability to set technical direction for a team rather than just execute within it.

Also a plus

• Experience building modern image-based, immutable, or declarative infrastructure platforms.
• Expertise with containers, Kubernetes, and migrating VM-based workloads to managed platforms
• Experience operating large-scale Linux fleets across AWS, Azure, or multiple regions.
• Familiarity with progressive delivery, automated validation, fleet health signals, and rollback systems.
• Experience modernizing legacy configuration-management or host-provisioning systems.
• Knowledge of OS security patching, software supply-chain security, and artifact provenance.
• Strong developer-platform instincts, with experience building safe abstractions and self-service workflows.

What the job covers

• Lead large, ambiguous infrastructure projects from initial design through production launch, broad adoption, and long-term operation. Define the architecture and success criteria, sequence the work, resolve technical ambiguity, coordinate cross-team dependencies, and shepherd projects to measurable impact.
• Set technical direction for the evolution of Stripe’s host infrastructure, including how machine images are built, validated, distributed, and operated. Guide thoughtful decisions about when to containerize workloads and when host-based approaches remain appropriate.
• Design systems and practices that make broad infrastructure changes safe and predictable. Establish strong validation, staged rollout, observability, and rollback capabilities. Build guardrails that prevent unhealthy changes from progressing and give operators clear, actionable information when failures occur.
• Lead incident response for the systems the team owns. Systematically reduce operational toil and make reliability, security, debuggability, and maintainability first-class properties of the platform.
• Partner with technical leaders across infrastructure, security, compliance, and service teams to represent the Imaging team’s perspective and align on shared technical direction. Build strong relationships with partner teams and lead work that crosses organizational and system boundaries.
• Lead critical design reviews and establish standards for the safety, reliability, operability, and usability of Stripe’s host infrastructure. Mentor senior engineers through high-stakes architectural decisions. Raise the quality of designs and implementations through hands-on coding, code review, debugging, and operational leadership.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• systems16×
• infrastructure14×
• technical10×
• design8×
• experience8×
• host7×
• images7×
• lead7×
• security7×
• configuration6×
• broad5×
• build5×
• engineers5×
• fleet5×
• packages5×
• platforms5×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

More open at Stripe

• Abuse InvestigatorDublin
• Abuse InvestigatorSeattle, San Francisco, New York City
• Abuse InvestigatorDublin
• Abuse Research EngineerRemote from the US
• Account Executive, AI SalesSan Francisco, CA
• Account Executive, AI Startups - GrowerNew York