Job description

CLOUD DEVOPS ENGINEER You'll build the cloud infrastructure that turns the open web into data: the platform beneath Firecrawl's crawling, scraping, and search products. We need engineers who can make that foundation (Kubernetes, storage, networking, deployments) fast, reliable, and cheap at web scale. You'll own real infrastructure from day one, not tickets in a backlog. Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ) or Toronto, ON (Toronto Hub). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week. Equity Range: Competitive equity. Details shared during the process. Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ) or Toronto, ON (Toronto Hub). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week. Job Type: Full-Time Experience: 5+ years in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Infrastructure Work Authorization: Open to candidates already authorized to work in the US or Canada. In the US, we also support H-1B transfers, F-1 OPT and STEM OPT, TN (Canada and Mexico), and E-3 (Australia). We’re not able to sponsor new H-1B visas for candidates outside the US. For Canada, we’ll consider work permit sponsorship case by case through our Toronto Hub. ABOUT FIRECRAWL Firecrawl is the easiest way to turn the web into data AI agents can use. One API call converts any URL into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data. It's the boring-hard problem everyone building with LLMs eventually hits, solved. In September 2026, we raised a $75M Series B led by Smash Capital, and we're spending it building the largest repository of knowledge in the world. We hit 8 figures in ARR in year one and more than doubled it in year two. We have 192k+ GitHub stars, putting us in the top 40 repositories of all time, and developers, agents, and category-defining AI companies build on us every day. Growth like this is rare, and we're just getting started. We're a small team punching far above our weight. Everyone here owns a real piece of the product and company, end to end, and runs it themselves. No hiding behind process or headcount. This is a place for people who want to work at the frontier: an AI company building the infrastructure other AI companies run on, not one bolting AI onto an existing product. We move fast, go deep, and are building the tools superintelligence will rely on to gather data from the web. That library is called Alexandria, and it starts now. OUR VALUES - Bias to action: We move fast, ship hard, and don’t wait to be told. - Realistic about AI: We’re clear-eyed about what AI can and can’t do, and we keep pushing to use it where it actually works. - All in: The next few years matter a lot, and we’re all in for them. - Human connection: As intelligence gets cheaper, relationships with customers, partners, and each other matter more. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design, build, and operate GCP and on-prem infrastructure behind Firecrawl's products - Run large stateful and high-throughput workloads on Kubernetes (search clusters, crawling fleets, queues, and databases) with zero-downtime upgrades - Own CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automations, and containerized deployments across the platform - Drive down infrastructure cost per request while traffic and data volume grow - Build the observability that keeps latency, throughput, and reliability predictable, and define the SLIs, SLOs, and customer-facing SLAs we hold ourselves to - Build and support our enterprise controls: SSO/SAML, RBAC, audit logging, tenant isolation, private networking, and the infrastructure behind SOC 2 and customer security reviews - Work directly with product and search engineers to productionize new services, retrieval, and ML workloads - Own the incident lifecycle with engineers, from on-call and triage process to postmortems and resolution WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - You've operated stateful distributed systems on Kubernetes at real scale, not just stateless services - You have deep experience with a major cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure), Docker, and Terraform. MLOps or ML-serving infrastructure experience (GPU workloads, model deployment pipelines) is a plus - You've run large-scale, data-heavy systems in production: search platforms, crawling or ingestion pipelines, or comparable. Hands-on experience operating Vespa is a strong plus - You care about latency, cost, and reliability in equal measure - Experience with security and compliance infrastructure (SSO/SAML, audit logging, network isolation, SOC 2) is a strong plus - You're comfortable owning ambiguous problems and turning them into shipped infrastructure WHAT WE'RE NOT LOOKING FOR - Someone who needs a fully-specced ticket to start - Someone who wants to specialize narrowly and hand off everything else - Someone who optimizes for process over shipping A NOTE ON PACE We operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever. If that excites you, keep reading. If it doesn't, no hard feelings, but this role probably isn't for you. BENEFITS & PERKS AVAILABLE TO ALL EMPLOYEES - Salary that makes sense: $246,000–$271,000 USD/year (SF) / $204,000–$212,000 CAD/year (Toronto), based on impact, not tenure - Own a piece: Gain competitive equity in what you're helping build - Generous PTO: 15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded). Take the time you need to recharge - Parental leave: 12 weeks fully paid, for all parents - Wellness stipend: $100 USD/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human - Learning & Development: Expense up to $1,000 USD/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally - Team offsites: A change of scenery, minus the trust falls - Sabbatical: 3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new AVAILABLE TO US-BASED FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES - Full coverage, no red tape: Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for partner and kids). No weird loopholes, just care that works - Life & Disability insurance: Employer-paid basic life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs - Virtual care and a health guide: Teladoc for the couch doctor visit, plus Rightway to answer coverage questions and fight billing errors for you - Mental health: Talkspace, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule - Fertility and family building: Carrot, covering you and your partner - EAP: Free confidential counseling, legal and financial consults, and online will prep through Guardian - 401(k) plan: Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you - Pre-tax benefits: HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits to help your wallet out a bit - Supplemental options: Extra life and AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, plus pet, legal, and identity protection through MetLife AVAILABLE TO CANADA-BASED FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES - Full coverage, no red tape: Extended health, dental, and vision through Manulife (Diamond, the top tier), 100% employer-paid for you, your partner, and your kids - Life & Disability insurance: Employer-paid life, AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs - Virtual care: Dialogue Premium, so you can see a doctor or nurse from your couch, any hour - Mental health: Talkspace Elite, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule - Fertility and family building: Carrot, covering you and your partner - Retirement: Group RRSP through Wealthsimple, so future-you can thank you AVAILABLE TO SF-BASED EMPLOYEES - SF HQ perks: Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy - E-Bike transportation: A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us AVAILABLE TO TORONTO-BASED EMPLOYEES - Toronto Hub perks: Snacks, drinks, team lunches, glass-walled views down University Avenue, and a home base steps from Union Station - Transit, covered: A PRESTO card loaded for GO Transit, subway, and streetcar, plus station parking if you drive to the train. Winter-proof, on us INTERVIEW PROCESS Application Review: Send us your work and a quick note on why this excites you. Show us what you've built: clusters you've run, pipelines you've automated, incidents you've tamed. We care about what you've shipped, not where you went to school. Intro Chat (~25 min): A quick conversation to get to know each other before we go deep. We'll talk about what you've been working on, what drew you to Firecrawl, and what you're looking for in your next role. Time for your questions too. Technical Chat (~45 min): We'll dig into a real problem from our world (running stateful clusters on Kubernetes, scaling an index fleet under growing traffic, driving down cost per request) and talk through how you'd approach it. Come ready to think out loud. We care how you reason, not whether you memorized the answer. Founder Chat (~25 min): Culture, pace, ownership, and how you like to work. Time for your questions too. Paid Work Trial (~40 Hours): Work with the team on a real, scoped piece of the product, paid at a contractor rate. It's the truest signal for both sides. You see what building at Firecrawl actually feels like, and we see how you ship. Remote-friendly, and we'll flex around your current commitments. Decision: We move fast after the trial. If you want to build the infrastructure that turns the whole web into data at a cost that shouldn't be possible, you should join us. 👉 Apply now.

Requirements

Must-haves

Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ) or Toronto, ON (Toronto Hub). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week.
Equity Range: Competitive equity. Details shared during the process.
Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ) or Toronto, ON (Toronto Hub). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week.
Job Type: Full-Time
Experience: 5+ years in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Infrastructure
Design, build, and operate GCP and on-prem infrastructure behind Firecrawl's products
Run large stateful and high-throughput workloads on Kubernetes (search clusters, crawling fleets, queues, and databases) with zero-downtime upgrades
Own CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automations, and containerized deployments across the platform
Drive down infrastructure cost per request while traffic and data volume grow
Build the observability that keeps latency, throughput, and reliability predictable, and define the SLIs, SLOs, and customer-facing SLAs we hold ourselves to
Build and support our enterprise controls: SSO/SAML, RBAC, audit logging, tenant isolation, private networking, and the infrastructure behind SOC 2 and customer security reviews
Work directly with product and search engineers to productionize new services, retrieval, and ML workloads
Own the incident lifecycle with engineers, from on-call and triage process to postmortems and resolution
You've operated stateful distributed systems on Kubernetes at real scale, not just stateless services
You've run large-scale, data-heavy systems in production: search platforms, crawling or ingestion pipelines, or comparable. Hands-on experience operating Vespa is a strong plus
You care about latency, cost, and reliability in equal measure
Experience with security and compliance infrastructure (SSO/SAML, audit logging, network isolation, SOC 2) is a strong plus
You're comfortable owning ambiguous problems and turning them into shipped infrastructure
Someone who needs a fully-specced ticket to start
Someone who wants to specialize narrowly and hand off everything else
Someone who optimizes for process over shipping
We operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever. If that excites you, keep reading. If it doesn't, no hard feelings, but this role probably isn't for you.
Salary that makes sense: $246,000–$271,000 USD/year (SF) / $204,000–$212,000 CAD/year (Toronto), based on impact, not tenure

Nice-to-haves

You have deep experience with a major cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure), Docker, and Terraform. MLOps or ML-serving infrastructure experience (GPU workloads, model deployment pipelines) is a plus

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

kubernetesaiapillmgogcpci/cdmlawsazuredocker

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick

Benefits

Benefits detected in the listing.

Dental

Vision

401(K)

Pto

Parental Leave

Wellness