As a Staff Systems Engineer in Developer Platform, you will partner with leaders of multiple platform teams. You will work closely with product to define and implement simple solutions to complex orchestration problems, building a highly scalable, reliable, and efficient platform for our customers. You will engineer and develop Kubernetes controllers, operators, and node-level daemons for the application runtime; drive performance tuning and scaling; and design multi-cluster control-plane capabilities that scale to millions of pods across thousands of clusters.
What You Will Do
- Engineer and develop a unified application platform for hybrid (multi-cluster, multi-region, multi-cloud) application management using Kubernetes controllers and feedback-driven control systems to meet SLOs.
- Deliver end-to-end automation for application lifecycle (deployments, rollouts, failovers, policy enforcement) to minimize manual work for users.
- Drive fleet-wide optimization for cost, performance, and latency through data-informed controls and capacity management, improving $/RPS and tail latency.
- Build resilient, multi-tenant control planes and workflows that safely scale to millions of pods across thousands of clusters.
- Ensure reliability, security, and governance with clear guardrails, safe defaults, and automated remediation.
- Partner with product and customers to turn complex orchestration problems into simple, reusable platform primitives and great developer experiences.
- Champion observability and continuous improvement with measurable, outcome-focused metrics.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Math, or a closely related field (or equivalent experience)
- 10+ years in backend software development and operations
- Recent experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems (last 3 years) • Fluency in one or more among Go, C/C++, Python, or Java
- Proven track record of delivering mission-critical systems
- Experience with cloud computing using AWS or Azure or GCP
Preferred Qualifications
- Kubernetes API machinery and semantics: SSA, SMP, server-side dry-run, watches/informers/listers, rate-limited workqueues, finalizers, owner references, leader election, API Priority and Fairness
- Controllers/operators and node daemons in Go: client-go/controller-runtime, reconciliation patterns, backoff and retry, idempotency, partitioned/sharded controllers, HA and failover
- CRDs and webhooks: versioning, conversion functions/webhooks, validating/mutating admission webhooks, policy frameworks and best practices
- Pod/runtime semantics: sidecars, init/ephemeral containers, probes (readiness/liveness/startup), lifecycle hooks, termination behavior, PDBs, QoS classes, ResourceQuota/LimitRange, topology spread, affinity/anti-affinity
- Scaling systems: HPA (resource/custom/external metrics), VPA, cluster autoscaler; multi-dimensional scaling, health-aware/autopilot-style policies; external metrics adapters and SLO-driven scaling
- Federated and multi-cluster: placement/propagation, failover, drift detection, reconciliation strategies; consistent hashing and partitioning for scale
- Distributed systems: CRDTs and eventual consistency paradigms; Raft/memberlist/gossip; deep familiarity with etcd, Kafka, Redis and their operational characteristics (compaction, backpressure, retention, failover)
- Observability and data: Prometheus (cardinality control, recording rules), tracing; experience with vector databases for search and diagnostics; strong time-series forecasting (classical + ML) and statistical modeling for proactive optimization
- Languages and interfaces: Go (primary), Java/Python as needed; gRPC/protobuf; JSON/YAML/Jsonnet
- Leadership: ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment and lead the delivery of large-scale services for complex business offerings
Privacy Notice
- Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below: https://www.coupang.jobs/privacy-policy/
Top Skills
What We Do
We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.
We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial, surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.
Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.
Why Work With Us
We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact.
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