Senior DevOps Platform Engineer

About Karius

Karius is a venture-backed life science startup that is transforming the way pathogens and other microbes are observed throughout the body. By unlocking the information present in microbial cell-free DNA, we're helping doctors quickly solve their most challenging cases, providing industry partners with access to the microbial landscape to accelerate biomarker discovery and clinical trials, discover novel microbes, to ultimately reduce patient suffering worldwide.

Position Summary 

We are building and operating a Cloud-based software platform that enables various unique and complex operations such as analyzing microbial genomic data to find pathogens, searching for unknown biomarkers signatures causing diseases, and serving physicians and researchers with life-saving insight. This platform includes a series of software services, web and mobile apps, petabytes of data, and a set of security and privacy controls. The Senior DevOps Engineer at Karius will play a critical role in driving the efficiency and reliability of our software systems that power advanced infectious disease diagnostics. This role requires a deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, automation, and software development processes. You will work closely with cross-functional teams, including software engineering, data science, and IT, to ensure the seamless operation of our platforms and the delivery of high-quality, scalable solutions.

In this role, you will work with a small and highly focused team of software engineers and data scientists across the domains of frontend and backend software development, data engineering, genomic analytics, and computational biology to design, develop, and operate this platform, including CI/CD pipelines, development, test, and production environments along with data lakes and storage solutions. Reliability, scalability, and security are critical.

The ideal candidate is energized and motivated by the opportunity to architect, design, and implement the DevOps infrastructure as we radically improve the automation and maturity of the systems. You crave tough challenges in a super technical, fast pace, and collaborative environment that requires creativity and vision to navigate complex and ambiguous problems.

Why Should You Join Us?

Karius aims to conquer infectious diseases through innovations around genomic sequencing and machine learning. The company’s platform is already delivering unprecedented insights into the microbial landscape, providing clinicians with a comprehensive test capable of identifying more than a thousand pathogens directly from blood, and helping industry accelerate the development of therapeutic solutions. The Karius test we provide today is one of the most advanced solutions available to physicians who aim to deliver better care to many otherwise ineffectively treated patients. Our test is the result of some incredible work done by our scientists, statisticians, engineers, and physicians, all driven by the same mission. You, as part of the Karius team, will be able to see how directly your work has a life-changing impact on people, and at scale.

Reports to: Sr. Manager, Platform Engineering

*This position is not open to agency support at this time. Agencies, please contact [email protected] and not the hiring manager for inquiries.

Location: Redwood City, CA (Hybrid)

Primary Responsibilities 

• Develop and maintain scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools

• Manage cloud resources across multiple environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure), optimizing for cost, performance, and security

• Building a shared platform, including the tools, services, workflows, and data used by engineers, data scientists and other teams across the organization

• Collaborate with the security team to incorporate best practices into the DevOps process, ensuring compliance with HIPAA and other regulatory requirements

• Develop and maintain scripts and tools to automate routine tasks and improve operational efficiency

• Implement and maintain robust monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions (using tools such as • Prometheus, Grafana, or ELK stack) to ensure high system availability and quick incident response

• Lead incident response efforts for production environments, ensuring swift resolution of issues and minimizing downtime

• Managing the software code lifecycle 

• Building continuous integration and delivery 

• Establishing and monitoring change management and release quality gates compliant with life science and diagnostic industry regulations

• Building a platform for automated testing and quality measurement throughout the development lifecycle

• Monitoring and support of production operation

• Driving innovation in DevSecOps processes and infrastructure implementation according to the industry standards and best practices such as NIST framework

• Bring new ideas, designs, and tools to the table, drive technical discussions and decision making related to the provisioning and operation of the software stack

What’s Fun About the Job?

Karius is operating at the edge of what is now known to be possible in infectious disease diagnostics. With that, comes a wave of new and incredible challenges and opportunities. To deliver on that value, you will be tapping into some of the most advanced technologies, architecting and innovating where the current solutions simply don't suffice. You will get to see how much your work really matters.

Travel: up to 10%

Physical Requirements

Subject to extended periods of sitting and/or standing, vision to monitor, and moderate noise levels. Work is performed in an office environment.

Position Requirements

• BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical fields involving algorithms and coding, with a focus on cloud infrastructure and automation.

• 5+ years of software engineering, DevOps, and/or SRE experience

• Extensive experience with AWS and other Cloud services.

• Extensive experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation.

• Experience in running cloud services using containers and cluster management tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Kustomize, Istio 

• Developing and operating continuous integrations and deployments 

• Programming skills in developing and operating software in cloud environments using Python, Golang, or Groovy.

• Excellent troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, with a proactive approach to identifying and resolving issues. 

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work effectively in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes on platform - AWS EKS Knowledge and working experience with: 

- Unix based operating systems 

- Automation frameworks and toolsets such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef etc. 

- Code repositories (like Git) and artifact repositories (like Artifactory, ECR) 

- Networking: VPCs, traffic routing, DNS, load balancing etc. Knowledge of security best practices and controls such as RBAC, OWASP, HIPAA 

• Extensive knowledge of CICD pipelines to build and support such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins - automation framework 

• Knowledge of Internal Developer Platform and Typescript

• Knowledge of Quality Engineering and Test framework 

• Systematic problem-solving and debugging, coupled with strong communication skills and a sense of ownership and drive 

• Ability and desire to work on and support all aspects of software development in an agile environment including documentation, design, development, and testing of features and sub-systems 

• Experience in the healthcare or life sciences industries, and familiarity with related regulations is preferred

Disclaimer

The above job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals assigned to this position. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and skills required. Responsibilities and duties may change or be adjusted to meet the needs of the company, and additional duties may be assigned as necessary. The job description is subject to change at any time at the discretion of Karius.

At Karius, we value a diverse and inclusive workplace and provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees, and are committed to honor and invest in the full diversity of people, in our hiring, recruiting, and development of employees across the Company. All qualified applicants for employment are encouraged to apply and will be considered without regard to an individual’s race, color, sex, gender identity, and gender expression (including transgender individuals who are transitioning, have transitioned, or are perceived to be transitioning to the gender with which they identify), religion, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, marital status, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local laws. If you are unable to submit your application due to a disability, please contact us at [email protected] and we will accommodate qualified individuals with disabilities.