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Kernel

Infrastructure Engineer

San Francisco · New York · Seattle · Cincinnati

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hirly's read of this role

Seniority
Mid level
Stated salary
$175,000 – $250,000 per year
Country
US
Work mode
On-site / unstated
First seen by hirly
28 Sept 2026

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the posting

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.

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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.

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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

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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 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.

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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

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Hiring process

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!

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Original posting on Kernel's site ↗

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