← All jobs
Kernel

Infrastructure Engineer

San Francisco
Salary
$175K - $250K
Level
Junior
Work type
On-site · San Francisco

Not stated in the posting: visa.

Open. First seen 2 October 2026.

Apply on the company's site →

About the role

About Kernel

Kernel is crazy fast, open source browser infrastructure for AI agents. We handle autoscaling, observability, and the messy details of web interaction, so developers can focus on what their agents do instead of how they do it.

Teams at Cash App, Rye, and 3000+ others use Kernel for deep research, QA automation, and real-time web analysis. We've raised $22M from Accel, YC, and Vercel.

If you're interested in building critical infrastructure for agents on the web, we'd love to chat.

​

About the role

As an Infrastructure Engineer at Kernel, you’ll architect and build the core systems that power our AI agent platform end-to-end. You’ll own critical infrastructure from conception to production, working with bleeding edge tech that needs to be both reliable and low latency. You’ll also play a foundational role in how we build Kernel’s culture.

​

What you’ll do

  • Design, develop, and scale new product infrastructure, developer tools, and APIs
  • Set direction for critical technical surface areas, enabling us to stay ahead of rapid growth
  • Shape Kernel’s hiring decisions and culture as we grow

​

What we’re looking for

  • Experience scaling and designing distributed systems
  • Interest or experience in microVMs / unikernels and developer tools
  • >=1 year of experience at a company with <50 people
  • Technical excellence: we’re building core infrastructure that’s default open source. As a developer tool, our technical decisions are the product, and the details matter a lot.
  • Low ego, high impact: you care more about building something meaningful than who gets credit
  • Start-up ready: early stage sometimes means figuring it out as we go, and that energizes rather than drains you
  • Excited to crush it: we’re moving fast and looking for people excited about high velocity, high impact work, and having fun along the way.

​

What you can expect as a Kernel

  • Industry-competitive salary
  • Above market equity
  • Premium medical + dental coverage + dependent coverage
  • Small, trusting team of senior + staff engineers
  • Default async with minimal bureaucracy, only one meeting a week
  • $1k / mo budget for LLM usage fees #vibecheck
  • Daily lunches on us
  • Unlimited PTO
  • 401k + company match
  • Relocation assistance

​

Hiring process

Kernel's standard text

We have a simple process focused on real world collaboration and jointly getting to know each other:

  • 30-minute intro call with one of Kernel’s co-founders
  • 45-minute technical interview (virtual)
  • Half-day on-site (virtual or in-person) working with our team on relevant challenges.
  • Offer!

​

What this role asks for

In most of Kernel's ads

LLM · Vercel

Named in most of its open postings, whatever the role.

96% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Kernel's standard text, folded away below.

Read against Kernel's other open postings on this site.

The team: Engineering

This role is one of 7 open in Engineering.

WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS

Vercel (7 of 7), LLM (6 of 7), Docker (3 of 7), GitHub (3 of 7), Sentry (3 of 7), Supabase (2 of 7)

OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM

From the team and dates on Kernel's own job board.

Salary context

38 other open postings titled Infrastructure Engineer state a salary: median USD 150,000 to USD 234,000 a year.

Similar jobs

Is this your posting and you want it taken down? Email info@careerholo.com.