A World-Changing Company
Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.
The Role
Substrate is the team responsible for Palantir’s core production infrastructure — 100s of K8s clusters — from on-prem to the major cloud hyperscalers, whether they are internet-connected or air-gapped, small hardware footprint or large. As a Senior Software Engineer on Substrate, you will design and build Palantir’s managed Kubernetes product offerings across all these environments.
You and your team will be responsible for bootstrapping and operating the entire fleet of K8s clusters with zero manual steps by building industry leading tooling and contributing to core CNCF components. You will also be responsible for ensuring scale, stability and security across a matrix of compliance regimes and hosting infrastructure types. Your team culture emphasizes engineering rigor and operational excellence at scale. This means issues in production should be pre-empted and deeply root-caused, and investments in automation and self-healing systems are key.
If you’re excited about infrastructure at scale and working with Kubernetes, this is the right role for you.
Core Responsibilities
- Deliver a container runtime to challenging new environment types - new clouds, on premise, edge devices
- Build automation and establish standards for operating K8s securely at scale with zero manual ops overhead
- Drive innovation through adoption of novel K8s features and CNCF tools, making upstream contributions as needed
- Design the next generation of Palantir’s infrastructure through a deep understanding of internal systems and CNCF standards
What We Value
- Systems programming experience with strong proficiency in golang, C/C++ or equivalent
- Working knowledge or hands on experience of infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform, ansible, puppet or K8s operators, and competent coding in Go, Java, or equivalent for the purposes of automation or scripting
- Deep familiarity with hardware and OS configurations, diagnostic tooling, networking nuts and bolts
- Deep familiarity with containers (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) at scale
- Experience working with a cloud provider (AWS/Azure/GCE), or sysadmin/SRE experience in data centers
- Experience designing, building, and operating high-scale observability or infrastructure systems
- Working knowledge of networking fundamentals, experience with CNIs or cloud networking infrastructure preferred
What We Require
- 4+ years of professional software development experience on core infrastructure with emphasis on operational excellence
- 2+ years of experience contributing to the system design or architecture (architecture, design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent
Life at Palantir
We want every Palantirian to achieve their best outcomes, that’s why we celebrate individuals’ strengths, skills, and interests, from your first interview to your longterm growth, rather than rely on traditional career ladders. Paying attention to the needs of our community enables us to optimize our opportunities to grow and helps ensure many pathways to success at Palantir. Promoting health and well-being across all areas of Palantirians’ lives is just one of the ways we’re investing in our community. Learn more at
Life at Palantir and note that our offerings may vary by region.
In keeping consistent with Palantir’s values and culture, we believe employees are “better together” and in-person work affords the opportunity for more creative outcomes. Therefore, we encourage employees to work from our offices to foster connectivity and innovation. Many teams do offer hybrid options (WFH a day or two a week), allowing our employees to strike the right trade-off for their personal productivity. Based on business need, there are a few roles that allow for “Remote” work on an exceptional basis. If you are applying for one of these roles, you must work from the city and or country in which you are employed. If the posting is specified as Onsite, you are required to work from an office.
Palantir is committed to promoting a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We believe that all Palantirians share the responsibility of upholding our commitment to these values and encourage candidates from a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences to join us in solving the world’s hardest problems.
Palantir is committed to making the job application process accessible to everyone. If you are living with a disability (visible or not visible) and need to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, please reach out and let us know how we can help.
