Senior DevOps Engineer

**Merciv** Senior DevOps Engineer, Platform Infrastructure; $160K – $200K + 0.05%–0.1% Equity; New York City (On-site)

**About the Company** Merciv helps Fortune 500 retailers make faster decisions and has already driven 8-figure gross margin improvements. The company has raised $14M in seed funding, is emerging publicly after nearly two years in stealth, and is building an AI and data platform that connects fragmented enterprise and market data into a single intelligence layer.

Its platform surfaces insights and automates workflows that once took analysts weeks. Merciv was founded by a technical team with deep innovation and graph database expertise, and engineers joining now will have significant influence on architecture, product direction, and culture.

**About the Role** Own the infrastructure powering Merciv at enterprise scale. You’ll architect, build, and maintain secure, scalable cloud systems used by Fortune 500 retailers, partnering closely with backend and ML engineers to keep the platform reliable.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role with immediate responsibility for technical execution. You’ll take over infrastructure leadership from the current DevOps lead during a transition period, then own the domain long term. Merciv emphasizes GitOps and infrastructure as code, and you’ll help turn those principles into systems that let engineering move quickly without sacrificing security or stability.

**Responsibilities** - Build secure, scalable AWS infrastructure with Terraform and Terragrunt. - Improve delivery speed through automated CI/CD and GitOps workflows. - Raise production reliability with observability, SLI/SLOs, and incident leadership. - Deliver compliance-ready infrastructure with strong IAM and secrets management. - Optimize cloud spend without compromising performance, scalability, or reliability. - Lead infrastructure transition and elevate long-term DevOps standards.

**Required Skills**

A. 4–7+ years of industry experience with at least 4 years in hands-on DevOps/infrastructure roles B. 4+ years managing cloud infrastructure in production — AWS strongly preferred C. 2+ years of production Kubernetes experience (EKS preferred) D. Deeply proficient in Terraform/Terragrunt and Infrastructure-as-Code principles E. Strong scripting skills in Python and Bash — automates everything possible F. Experience with CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar)

**Bonus Skills**

- Security-first mindset with experience implementing compliance frameworks - Systems-level, architectural, and strategic thinking — must demonstrate this in technical screen to advance. Concepts over syntax: can articulate reliability targets, scaling policies, and rollback criteria regardless of specific tooling - Experience supporting ML/AI workloads and GPU infrastructure - Familiarity with service mesh architectures and advanced networking - Experience with multi-tenant enterprise SaaS infrastructure - Background in cost optimization and FinOps practices - Former technical founders encouraged — care more about what you've built than how long you've been building

**Logistical Info**

- Location: New York City - on-site 3-5 days/week. Currently prioritizing NYC-based candidates only - Compensation: $160,000 – $200,000 base + 0.05%–0.1% equity - Number of openings: Up to 2 - **Other:** - Health, dental, vision, 401k - Home office stipend, flexible PTO - Ground-floor equity at a well-funded seed-stage company Strong team culture: weekly activities, team events, zero attrition to date

**Ideal Background** - FAANG-adjacent or startup-minded. Senior DevOps/platform engineer who's owned infrastructure at a high-growth startup or on a smaller team within a larger company — someone who's built and operated production cloud infrastructure at real scale, not just maintained existing systems. - Think: infrastructure engineers from applied AI companies, enterprise SaaS platforms, or high-scale consumer tech who understand the full stack from Terraform to Kubernetes to observability. - Former technical founders are a strong fit - Merciv cares more about what you've built than tenure. - The key signal is hands-on ownership: this person should have been the one standing up infrastructure, not just writing tickets for someone else to execute.

**Green Flags** - High-agency, low-ego operator with strong communication. - Thinks in systems, not just tooling syntax. - Understands SLOs, incident response, and scaling tradeoffs. - Can map equivalent infrastructure tools by principle. - Has built or professionalized infrastructure end-to-end. - Excited by ML and AI infrastructure challenges.

**Red Flags** - Senior title without current hands-on ability. - Limited scope experience in low-agency environments. - Only executes others' designs, not end-to-end ownership. - Talks tools, not reliability or scaling concepts. - Only maintained systems, never built or professionalized them. - Not willing to work in-office in NYC.

**Interview Process** 1. Recruiter Intro (30 min) 2. Technical Conversation (60 min) 3. On-site Team Interview (3 hrs) 4. Offer (—)