SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Robinhood is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to own the architectural evolution of Core Infrastructure—the foundational platform powering 24/7 trading, crypto operations, and global expansion. This is a high-impact, hands-on role designing the systems and abstractions that every engineering team at Robinhood depends on.
You will own three deeply interconnected domains: service mesh and connectivity (Istio/Envoy), compute platform (Kubernetes), and infrastructure provisioning (Terraform). Your decisions directly shape engineering velocity, operational reliability, and Robinhood's ability to scale to new regions and markets. This is not an operations role—it's a platform redesign opportunity to establish the foundation before complexity becomes permanent.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own service mesh architecture end-to-end: standardize and evolve Istio and Envoy deployments, eliminate deprecated communication patterns, and build the networking foundation for multi-region operation.
- Drive Kubernetes compute platform evolution: define long-term direction for cluster lifecycle, scheduling strategy, control plane architecture, and multi-region resiliency across the entire compute fleet.
- Redesign infrastructure provisioning: transform Terraform from ad-hoc configurations into a scalable, self-service platform enabling 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 layers; 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 affecting the entire engineering organization.
Required expertise:
- Deep, hands-on knowledge of Kubernetes internals (API server, controller reconciliation, etcd watch propagation, scheduler mechanics, admission control).
- Deep working knowledge of Istio and/or Envoy at the source code level, including the xDS API protocol and debugging at the control-plane/data-plane boundary.
- HTTP/2 and gRPC wire-level knowledge (connection management, flow control, stream multiplexing, observability).
- Terraform at architectural scale (module design patterns, provider internals, remote state management, multi-region provisioning).
- Production Go or Python for infrastructure tooling with strong fundamentals in well-structured, tested, operationally sound code.
- Proven ability to drive cross-functional architectural change across large or complex engineering organizations, influencing without authority and shipping durable decisions.
Robinhood's mission is to democratize finance for all. The company is building an elite team applying frontier technologies to the world's biggest financial problems. Expectations are high, and so are the rewards. The role is based in Bellevue, WA, with in-person attendance expected at least 3 days per week.
