Applications deadline: We are conducting interviews actively and aim to fill this role as soon as we find someone suitable.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Apollo Research's mission is to reduce the risks from scheming frontier AI systems. We work with and are trusted by every frontier AI lab. We test their models before deployment and collaborate with them on scheming mitigations.
We're looking for a Software Engineer to build the platform that the rest of Apollo runs on. This platform determines how quickly we can take on new research and scale our operations, whilst keeping our most valuable assets secure.
Apollo is fast-growing and fast-moving and this role is critical to enabling that growth and strengthening the trust of our partners, which is essential to our mission.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Help set the vision for the platform. As Apollo takes on greater and more complex research, the platform must keep pace. You'll talk with researchers and engineers, understand where things are heading, and propose a plan for what we build, why, and in what order.
Build and maintain Apollo's cloud infrastructure. This means IaC, networking, environment management, observability, and cost control. Everything should be reproducible, auditable, and as automated as possible.
Protect Apollo’s assets. Frontier labs trust us to evaluate their models pre-release. It is essential to build our infrastructure in such a way that our researchers can do this work securely so that labs continue to trust us. You’ll be a key part of this work, designing and implementing controls to keep these assets safe..
Keep things running. We run a collection of services for our team. When something breaks, you'll be one of the first people they come to for help. You know when a quick fix is fine and when you need to take the time to do it properly.
Create infrastructure for agent tooling. As more of our team builds and deploys agents, you'll develop the platform that makes this safe, reliable, and maintainable. You'll work closely with our security lead to make sure the infrastructure meets the bar our partnerships require.
REPRESENTATIVE PROJECTS
Here are examples of projects which you might build in your first 6 months:
Strengthening Security with Agents: Apollo faces threats every day and we want to make sure our systems are battle hardened. You would build harnesses that use agents to test Apollo’s internal isolation and public facing infrastructure. Finding flaws, reporting and remediating them before an attacker would have a chance.
Observability platform: Stand up the metrics, logging, and health monitoring layer that any Apollo engineer can plug into and immediately get usage, health, and security signals for their service.
Multi-cloud GPU orchestration: The platform that finds and provisions GPUs across providers on demand, so a researcher asking for 10 H200s gets a working cluster with packages, networking and IAM in minutes.
Internal service platform: All employees are now capable of building services with the help of coding agents. This comes with both massive upsides and security concerns. You would build the paved road, to mitigate the risks, that lets any Apollo engineer, researcher, or employee ship a service. This platform becomes a catalyst for all employees delivering more securely.
REQUIREMENTS
7+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or DevOps engineering
Strong working experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP, in a multi-account and multi-project setup.
Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, or similar)
Experience with containerisation technologies like Docker
Experience designing and owning infrastructure for a growing engineering team, not just contributing to an existing setup
Experience building systems in programming languages like Python, Rust, Go.
You've built and operated services that real users depend on, and you've been responsible for their uptime, reliability, and scaling
It will be a bonus if you have the following:
Exposure to agentic AI workflows or building platforms that support AI/ML workflows
Familiarity with GPU workloads, ML training infrastructure, or research compute
Demonstrated interest in AI safety (e.g. worked at an AI safety org, relevant coursework or research)
We want to emphasize that people who feel they don’t fulfill all of these characteristics but think they would be a good fit for the position nonetheless are strongly encouraged to apply. We believe that excellent candidates can come from a variety of backgrounds and are excited to give you opportunities to shine.
BENEFITS
This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
Salary: 215k - 265k USD
Flexible work hours and schedule
Unlimited vacation
Unlimited sick leave
Up to 6 months of paid parental leave
Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance
Retirement savings with competitive employer matching (e.g. 401(k) for US employees)
Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays
Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences
A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget
LOGISTICS
Start Date: We are conducting interviews actively and aim to fill this role as soon as we find someone suitable.
Time Allocation: Full-time
Location: This is an in-person role working out of our San Francisco office.
Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in the US. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed for every role or candidate, but if we make you an offer, we'll work with you to find the right visa route.
