Infrastructure & Site Reliability Engineer

About Atomic Semi

Atomic Semi is building a small, fast semiconductor fab.

It’s already possible to build this with today’s technology and a few simplifications. We’ll build the tools ourselves so we can quickly iterate and improve.

We’re building a small team of exceptional, hands-on engineers to make this happen. Mechanical, electrical, hardware, computer, and process. We’ll own the stack from atoms to architecture. Our team is optimistic about the future and we want to continue pushing the limits of technology.

Smaller is better. Faster is better. Building it ourselves is better.

We believe our team and lab can build anything. We’ve set up 3D printers, a wide array of microscopes, e-beam writers, general fabrication equipment - and whatever is missing, we’ll just invent along the way.

Atomic was founded by Sam Zeloof and Jim Keller. Sam is best known for making chips in his garage, and Jim has been a leader in the semiconductor industry for the past 40 years.

About the Team

The Infrastructure team is the backbone of Atomic Semi. We build the internal tools, databases, deployments, and networking infrastructure that empower our software engineers. Our ultimate goal is complete command and control everything in the fab—ensuring our systems remain relentlessly reliable, scalable, and secure as the company grows.

About the role

As an Infrastructure & Site Reliability Engineer, you will design, build, deploy, and manage the on-prem backend infrastructure that powers our small, fast semiconductor fab. This is a broad, hands-on role where you will own all aspects of our backend services from the ground up.

Our philosophy toward infrastructure is minimal, understandable, and close to the hardware. You won’t find much Docker, cloud services, or Kubernetes here. Instead, you will work primarily with bare-metal Linux, systemd, and single-file binaries written in Rust, Go, and occasionally Python.

We are open to a range of experience levels—from exceptional early-career engineers to staff-level builders. What matters most is that you have built real things, you love getting close to the metal, and you are excited by performance engineering. You will know you are successful when you have built a highly performant, rock-solid, bare-metal infrastructure that allows our engineering team to rapidly and reliably operate the fab without unnecessary abstraction.

A portfolio is required to apply: show us the things you’ve actually built! For us, a strong portfolio demonstrates your engineering excellence, curiosity, and a love for taking ideas from concept to reality. This could be a backend service, homelab setup script, etc.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement light-weight, performant, and reliable software infrastructure to power a semiconductor fab.

• Procure, deploy and manage our fleet of on-prem servers, virtual machines, and single-board computers running on semiconductor fabrication equipment.

• Deploy and manage backend services, e.g., consul, vault, grafana, victoria-metrics, alertmanager, redpanda, vector, gitea, postgres

• Design and setup low level networking components, e.g., service discovery, DNS, reverse proxies, TLS, S3 compatible storage, VPNs

• Scale our observability platform: Build systems to ingest and display both traditional system metrics as well as high frequency telemetry from semiconductor fabrication equipment.

• Design and implement cross-site networking, replication and backups.

• Automate OS image creation and deployment and software build and deployment systems.

• Develop best practices and tools for security, authentication, authorization, and secrets management

• Help build our in-house infrastructure-as-code tool.

Required Experience

• BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent demonstrated exceptional skill in software engineering.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience in backend infrastructure or Site Reliability Engineering, successfully and autonomously taking complex systems from concept to production.

• Deep proficiency in at least one statically-typed, compiled language, with a strong command of systems fundamentals.

Nice-to-haves

• Hands-on programming experience in Rust or Go.

• Direct experience designing and managing on-premise, bare-metal infrastructure without relying on heavy cloud abstractions.

Working at Atomic Semi

We’re an early-stage hardware startup with solid funding, world-class advisors, and a lab/office in San Francisco, CA. 

Compensation: Atomic Semi is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The annual salary range for this role is $125,000 – $195,000. Compensation is determined based on your qualifications and experience. Our total compensation package also includes generous equity in Atomic Semi.

Benefits: Atomic Semi offers the following benefits, subject to applicable eligibility requirements: 

• Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance

• Generous Paid Time Off inclusive of Holidays and Sick Time

• Visa Sponsorship

• Life and Disability Insurance

• Paid Parental Leave

• 401(k) retirement plan

• Weekly Learning & Development opportunities

• Commuter Benefits including Parking and Late Night Uber rides from the office

• Lunches daily, Dinners 3x per week, Stocked Office Kitchen with Snacks and Spindrifts

We are an equal-opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or other legally protected statuses.

Export Control Analysis: This position involves access to technology that is subject to U.S. export controls. Any job offer made will be contingent upon the applicant’s capacity to serve in compliance with U.S. export controls.

Compensation Range: $125K - $195K