Software Engineer, Infrastructure at Keycard Labs

Job description

ABOUT KEYCARD At Keycard, we're building identity and access infrastructure for the agent-native era, where software isn't static but a dynamic, constantly changing system of AI agents working on behalf of people and businesses. Keycard gives every agent a verified identity and issues short-lived, task-scoped credentials at runtime, so agents can only do what they were asked to do, and every action is fully auditable. We're backed by a16z, Boldstart, and Acrew, and our founding team built and scaled Snyk, Auth0, HashiCorp, and Heroku. THE ROLE We're hiring a staff-level Software Engineer, Infrastructure to build and own how Keycard is deployed and run: in our multi-tenant cloud, in dedicated single-tenant cells, and in our customers' own cloud accounts. Keycard is a control plane for agents: identity, credential exchange, delegation, policy, and audit. Many of the enterprises adopting it need that control plane inside their own cloud, behind their network controls, with no standing access for us. Bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) is a product at Keycard, not a services engagement. It's versioned, documented, and held to the same bar as our hosted service. You'll own BYOC end to end, along with the infrastructure that runs every Keycard cell. You'll work directly with founders, the engineers building our identity and policy services, and the customers running Keycard in their own cloud. Your priority is the platform that makes customer-hosted deployments repeatable. Installs and support shouldn't swallow the job; you'll agree to escalation and on-call with engineering. We build on AWS (and at some point - GCP, and Azure), EKS, Pulumi, and Helm. WHAT YOU'LL DO - BYOC product. Own what it's like to install, upgrade, and get support for Keycard in a customer's cloud, from what their security team reviews to how each version is documented. - Compatibility. Decide what we support, from clouds, regions, and Kubernetes versions to customer guardrails like SCPs and egress proxies. Set the skew limits and deprecation policy that keep our control plane and customer cells compatible. - Cells everywhere. Make a new cell, ours or a customer's, a configuration change: infrastructure as code, account bootstrap, and network patterns like PrivateLink and certificates that work through customer proxies. For example: take a new customer's AWS account to a running, upgradeable cell with no standing access from us. - Releases. Get releases to many independently versioned cells with staged promotion, approval gates, and rollback. Operate those cells without standing access, with observability, runbooks, and audited break-glass. - Agent operations. Build agents for the repetitive work: pre-install checks, installs, failed-upgrade triage, and runbook drafts. They run with scoped credentials, every action is audited, and an engineer approves any change to a customer account. - Cost per install. Keep each install cheap in engineering time and cloud spend. Decide what's standard, what's configurable, and what we decline, so one customer's request doesn't become the roadmap. - Cell guardrails. Work through reviews with customers' cloud and security teams. With security, set the guardrails for every cell, from credential scope and isolation to workload identity and PKI, then build and run them. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - You build infrastructure as software in Pulumi, Terraform, or CDK, and write the Go or TypeScript tooling around it. You've run Kubernetes and Helm in production. - Deep AWS experience, especially IAM and permission boundaries, Organizations and SCPs, and VPC networking. - You've run software in accounts you don't control, like customer VPCs, on-prem, or regulated networks, and supported it through upgrades. - You've shipped versioned releases that customers upgrade on their own schedule, with a support matrix and deprecations they could plan around. - You debug across layers: a hung request that turns out to be a security group rule, a proxy that breaks a TLS handshake, a certificate challenge that can't reach the internet. - You've worked directly with customers' platform and security teams, and turned down a one-off when a product change was better. - You've made hard trade-offs to ship something now without boxing in the long-term system. - You write clear plans and async updates, and know when to jump on a call. - Agents at work. You already use coding agents in infrastructure work and have a clear view of where they're reliable and where a human has to review. STRONG CANDIDATES MAY ALSO HAVE - Experience building a BYOC, single-tenant, or self-hosted offering at an infrastructure, data, or security company. - GCP or Azure alongside AWS, including private connectivity on those clouds. - Workload identity and PKI in production: SPIFFE/SPIRE, cert-manager, private CAs. - Experience with OAuth, OIDC, or mTLS, and interest in agent protocols like MCP. YOUR FIRST 90 DAYS - Take our first customer-hosted deployment from pre-production to production with the customer. - Install for a second customer without bespoke work, starting from the templates, bootstrap, and pre-install checks the first one produced. - Publish the first BYOC support matrix and upgrade policy. - Agree a BYOC roadmap with product and engineering, including which operational work moves to agents. WHO WILL LOVE THIS JOB - You want to build a product that runs in someone else's cloud and make it as solid as one you host. - You'd rather fix the product than repeat a custom install. WHAT WE OFFER - Build at the Frontier: Work every day at the frontier of agent-native systems — shipping, inventing, and iterating on technology that hasn’t been built before. You’ll be given huge autonomy, the opportunity to gain mastery, and the chance to work in a team that holds each other accountable to succeed. - Truly Agent-Native Culture: At Keycard, we don’t just enable others to adopt agents — we use them ourselves to build. You’ll help shape an organization that embeds AI into its foundation as an enduring competitive advantage. - Compensation With Upside: Market-competitive salaries and generous equity packages (4-year vest, 1-year cliff) give you the security to focus on building — and the asymmetric upside of ownership in a company chasing a category-defining mission. - Comprehensive Benefits & Recharge: Health, dental, vision, and paramedical coverage for you and your family, plus 4 weeks vacation, 11 statutory holidays, and 1 volunteer day annually. We encourage at least 2 weeks off each year to fully recharge. - Tools That Keep You Ahead: A new MacBook Pro, a $500 stipend for peripherals, and the best AI tools available so you can work at the forefront of agent-native workflows. - Remote-First Flexibility: We are a remote-first team prioritizing asynchronous collaboration, with hiring focused in North and South America. Work where you’re strongest — we just want the best.

Requirements

Must-haves

We're hiring a staff-level Software Engineer, Infrastructure to build and own how Keycard is deployed and run: in our multi-tenant cloud, in dedicated single-tenant cells, and in our customers' own cloud accounts.
BYOC product. Own what it's like to install, upgrade, and get support for Keycard in a customer's cloud, from what their security team reviews to how each version is documented.
Releases. Get releases to many independently versioned cells with staged promotion, approval gates, and rollback. Operate those cells without standing access, with observability, runbooks, and audited break-glass.
Cost per install. Keep each install cheap in engineering time and cloud spend. Decide what's standard, what's configurable, and what we decline, so one customer's request doesn't become the roadmap.
Cell guardrails. Work through reviews with customers' cloud and security teams. With security, set the guardrails for every cell, from credential scope and isolation to workload identity and PKI, then build and run them.
You build infrastructure as software in Pulumi, Terraform, or CDK, and write the Go or TypeScript tooling around it. You've run Kubernetes and Helm in production.
Deep AWS experience, especially IAM and permission boundaries, Organizations and SCPs, and VPC networking.
You've run software in accounts you don't control, like customer VPCs, on-prem, or regulated networks, and supported it through upgrades.
You've shipped versioned releases that customers upgrade on their own schedule, with a support matrix and deprecations they could plan around.
You debug across layers: a hung request that turns out to be a security group rule, a proxy that breaks a TLS handshake, a certificate challenge that can't reach the internet.
You've worked directly with customers' platform and security teams, and turned down a one-off when a product change was better.
You've made hard trade-offs to ship something now without boxing in the long-term system.
You write clear plans and async updates, and know when to jump on a call.
Agents at work. You already use coding agents in infrastructure work and have a clear view of where they're reliable and where a human has to review.
Experience building a BYOC, single-tenant, or self-hosted offering at an infrastructure, data, or security company.
GCP or Azure alongside AWS, including private connectivity on those clouds.
Workload identity and PKI in production: SPIFFE/SPIRE, cert-manager, private CAs.
Experience with OAuth, OIDC, or mTLS, and interest in agent protocols like MCP.
Take our first customer-hosted deployment from pre-production to production with the customer.
Install for a second customer without bespoke work, starting from the templates, bootstrap, and pre-install checks the first one produced.
Publish the first BYOC support matrix and upgrade policy.
Agree a BYOC roadmap with product and engineering, including which operational work moves to agents.
You want to build a product that runs in someone else's cloud and make it as solid as one you host.
You'd rather fix the product than repeat a custom install.

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Keywords to mirror

aiawsgcpazurekubernetesgotypescript

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick

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