Senior Staff Software Engineer (Core Infrastructure)

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on Core Infrastructure, you will own the architectural evolution of three deeply interconnected domains: service mesh and connectivity, compute platform, and infrastructure provisioning

Your decisions will directly shape engineering velocity, operational reliability, and Robinhood’s ability to expand to new regions and markets. This is not an operations role — it’s a once-in-a-platform-lifecycle opportunity to redesign the foundation before complexity becomes permanent!

Own service mesh architecture end-to-end — standardize and evolve Robinhood’s Istio and Envoy deployment, eliminate deprecated communication patterns, and build the networking foundation for multi-region operation

Drive Kubernetes compute platform evolution — define the long-term direction for cluster lifecycle, scheduling strategy, control plane architecture, and multi-region resiliency across Robinhood’s entire compute fleet

Redesign infrastructure provisioning — transform Terraform from a collection of ad-hoc configurations into a scalable, self-service platform capability that enables rapid region provisioning and developer autonomy

Operate with source-level depth — diagnose and resolve issues at the Kubernetes API machinery, etcd, Envoy xDS, and Terraform provider layer, and contribute upstream where it serves the platform

Define technical direction across teams — produce architecture proposals, lead design reviews, and drive cross-functional alignment on infrastructure decisions that affect every engineering organization at Robinhood- Deep, hands-on expertise with Kubernetes internals — API server, controller reconciliation, etcd watch propagation, scheduler mechanics, and admission control

Deep working knowledge of Istio and/or Envoy at the source code level — including the xDS API as a protocol; experience debugging at the control-plane/data-plane boundary

Terraform at architectural scale — module design patterns, provider internals, remote state management, and multi-region provisioning

Proven ability to drive cross-functional architectural change across large or complex engineering organizations — influencing without authority and shipping durable decisions

Production Go or Python for infrastructure tooling; strong fundamentals in writing well-structured, tested, operationally sound code

HTTP/2 and gRPC wire-level knowledge — connection management, flow control, stream multiplexing, and observability