Software Engineer, Internal Tooling & Infrastructure

Does it sound interesting to work on an open source platform managing the data and real-time search and inference for some of the largest companies in the world? Would you thrive on building and automating the internal systems and infrastructure a fast-moving company runs on — integrating the major cloud providers and the many SaaS systems we at Vespa.ai rely on every day? If so, we want you to join our team at Vespa.ai as a Software Engineer working on Internal Tooling & Infrastructure!

About Vespa.ai:
Vespa.ai is a team of passionate builders. We maintain and develop the Apache 2.0 licensed open-source AI search platform Vespa. 

Vespa is a fully featured search engine and vector database. It supports vector search (ANN), lexical search, and structured data search, all in a single query. Integrated machine-learning model inference enables the application of AI to make sense of data in real time. Together with Vespa’s proven scalability and high availability, this empowers to create production-ready search applications at any scale and with any combination of features. Our users and customers are #1 in e-commerce, content, and financial services globally, and are used by companies such as Perplexity, Spotify, Yahoo, Wix, and many more.

In addition to our open-source platform, Vespa.ai develops and runs Vespa Cloud, a robust SaaS offering that allows businesses to harness the power of our technology with ease.

At Vespa.ai, we are extremely focused on automating everything we do to grow fast and maintain high quality. In all roles, we scale through technology, not simply by adding larger teams. We take pride in being small, nimble, and the most productive.

Position overview
At Vespa.ai, we embrace DevOps as a company culture, seeking to solve technical problems with automation and code rather than repetitive manual effort. For our Vespa Cloud production systems, we have had this mindset from day one. Tooling and workflows for employees have changed rapidly with SaaS, and this will accelerate with AI. We aim to be more effective at what we do than anyone else, and our infrastructure should match that ambition.

We are seeking a Software Engineer to build and automate the internal systems and infrastructure that keep the rest of the company moving fast. This is a hands-on development role: you will focus on internal tooling, integrations, and infrastructure that support all of Vespa.ai's employees and engineering teams. You will approach traditional IT and operations problems with a developer's mindset; solving them through automation and code rather than manual tasks. You will also take part in our 24x7 on-call rotation for our production systems, approximately every fifth to sixth week.

At our Trondheim office, we work office-first: you will be based on-site most of the time, with the flexibility to work from home/remotely when needed, as agreed with your manager.

Responsibilities

• Build, automate, and maintain the internal tooling and systems that support employees and engineering across the company.
• Integrate the many SaaS services we rely on (typically via their RESTful APIs) into smooth, automated workflows.
• Implement a consistent strategy for access management, backup/disaster recovery, and automation access for the various internal tools supporting all our employees, such as Google Workspace, Jira, Spacelift, Grafana, HubSpot, BambooHR, etc.
• Improve our continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) systems.
• Monitor system performance and availability, and develop proactive alerting and remediation strategies.
• Participate in our 24x7 on-call rotation (approximately every 5th–6th week).
• Troubleshoot complex infrastructure issues and implement long-term solutions to prevent recurrence.
• Design, implement, and support the IT infrastructure managing Vespa.ai devices (laptops/phones) and user management.
  
  

Qualifications

• Strong programming skills in Java, Python, Go, or similar languages.
• Good understanding of sound software engineering principles and practices.
• Experience integrating with various service providers' (typically RESTful) APIs.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Solid understanding of networking, operating systems, and security principles.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
  
  

Desired Skills

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, Tofu, Spacelift, etc.
• Experience with CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions, Buildkite, etc.
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging systems (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
• Knowledge of infrastructure testing frameworks.
• An interest in developer experience — building internal tools that make other engineers more productive.
  
  

Some of Our Tools and Services

• JumpCloud, Google Workspace, and Slack
• GitHub Enterprise Cloud (including GitHub Actions)
• Jira Cloud and Jira Service Desk
• StrongDM, Grafana, Spacelift, and Buildkite
  
  

Why Join Us:

• Opportunities for professional growth and development as part of one of Europe's most exciting start-ups!
• Be part of a cutting-edge team working on innovative search and recommendation technology.
• Work on a team where we don't believe in silos between engineers; there aren't "developers", "ops people", and "sysadmins". We're all engineers solving problems the smart way together!
• Competitive salary and benefits.

Note: Vespa.ai is an equal-opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe in fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment where every team member has the opportunity to make a significant impact.