Railway

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Senior Infra Engineer: Datacenters

Job description

At Railway, we make it simple to ship software. A lot goes into that, but beneath it all is the physical hardware that powers our platform. This role bridges the universe of atoms, to the universe of bits.

The Infrastructure Engineering team owns the substrate Railway operate on, from the fiber-optic transceiver to the orchestrator that places workloads across our fleet - all tightly integrated and engineered for speed. As an engineer focused on Datacenters, you will drive how we convert dollars into operational compute. Your responsibilities will range from selecting datacenter facilities, transits and hardware to building and evolving the software tooling that lets our small team scale with leverage.

Curious? Learn more in our blog post about this team and the great work they're doing: So You Want to Build Your Own Data Center and Claude please rack me a datacenter, make no mistakes.

Want to learn about our work culture? Here is a four-part blog series that will help you see the unique ways our team works (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4).

About the role

For this role, you will:

  • Build automation for infrastructure (provisioning, configuration management, orchestration, etc.)
  • Design and procure $10m+ compute hardware per quarter
  • Manage and orchestrate supply chains and vendor relationships globally
  • Design rack layouts and floor maps for optimal efficiency
  • Construct monitoring, alerts, and dashboards to notify you before things break
  • Build operational processes to enable smooth hardware repairs, upgrades and installations
  • Own and evolve our in-house DCIM and provisioning system: Railyard
  • Be oncall 1-2 weeks per quarter
  • Communicate clearly using RFCs/Docs/etc to break up + deliver large, nebulous tasks
  • This is a high impact, high agency role with direct effect on company culture, trajectory, and outcome.

    About you

  • Posses strong Linux fundamentals (networking, storage, performance tuning, debugging at the OS layer)
  • Have prior experience with hardware deployments or working in operations-heavy environments
  • Delivered projects 0→N. Lead it, scaled it, seen your "brilliant solutions" become tech debt, etc
  • Operated with agency and urgency (bonus points if remotely!)
  • Had enough foresight to ship for today, design for 10x, and engineer for 100x in 18mo
  • Built the confidence to say no to 99% of things, and the grit to deliver the 1% that matter
  • We value and love to work with diverse persons from all backgrounds

    Things to Know

    For better or worse, we're a startup; our team dynamics are different from companies of different sizes and stages.

    • We're globally distributed—and getting more so. Stuff is always happening somewhere.
    • We don't expect you to be online all the time, but you'll need to be diligent about your boundaries — your end of day will overlap with someone else's start.
    • We're a small, high-ownership team that cares deeply about doing exceptional work. We're scaling quickly, which means we rely on leverage—systems over coordination, judgment over process. Expect ambiguity and a fast-moving environment.
    • You'll own real outcomes. That means making decisions, not just executing—and owning the success, or failure, that comes with them.

    Benefits and perks

    At Railway, we provide best in class benefits. Great salary, full health benefits including dependents, strong equity grants, equipment stipend, and much more. For more details, check back on the main careers page.

    Beyond compensation, there are a few things that we believe that make working at Railway truly unique:

    • Autonomy: We have very few meetings. Just a Monday and a Friday to go over the Company Board. We think your time is sacred, whether it's at work, or outside of work.
    • Ownership: We're a company with a high ownership, high autonomy culture. We hope that you'll come in, help us, and over the course of many years do the best work of your life. When we bring you onboard, we expect you to change the company.
    • Novel problems/solutions: We're a startup that's well funded, with cool problems, which lets us implement novel solutions! We abhor “busywork” and think, whether it's community, engineering, operations, etc there's always opportunity for creative and high leverage solutions.
    • Growth: We want you to grow with us, but we know that talent is loaned, so when you figure out what area you want to grow in next, whether it's at Railway or outside, we'll make sure you land there.

    How We Hire

    No tricks. No surprises. Here's the entire process.


    1

    Talk with us about the role

    This is completely open ended and we're just trying to see who you are, what you want to do, and where you wanna go.

    2

    Work on a small project to discuss in the interview

    Asynchronously implement the following:

  • Design a datacenter procurement, buildout, and management process from scratch
  • Interview Structure (60 Minutes):
  • Pre-work (before your interview): Complete your solution (advised)
  • 0-5m: introduction
  • 5-50m: Building (or expanding) your solution
  • 50-60m: Questions on Railway/Tech/etc
  • You can, and SHOULD! ask us questions ahead of time. Ask away!

    3

    Review your solution with the Team

    You'll sit down with someone on the team and go over the above. We'll poke into your solution, as well as get you acquainted with two more members of the team.

    Looking for: Learn about your problem solving skills. How you break down a problem and how you present a solution.

    4

    Meet the Team

    You'll meet the Team, which will be comprised of 4 people from vastly different sections of the company.

    Looking for: How you work with the rest of the team and communicate.

    5

    Chat with CEO

    Sit down with our founder and CEO for 30 minutes. This is a 1:1, open ended conversation.

    6

    Offer call

    Finally, we will present the offers, hammer out the details about your position, tee up onboarding, and start our journey together.


    Final Note: The interview goes both ways. Once again, please ask us things. Many things! Hard things. That's what we're here for.

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