Lead internal developer platform design, CI/CD standardization, AWS FinOps, and production Kubernetes operations. Manage EKS, Kafka/MSK, observability, incident response, infrastructure as code, cloud security, compliance, backup and recovery, and secure software development practices. Advise engineering teams on architecture and technical debt, apply AI to operational automation, improve reliability metrics, and mentor developers adopting internal tooling.
Clara is the leading platform in Latin America for companies to execute and manage every payment operation. More than 50,000 leading and fast-growing businesses run on our corporate cards, bill pay, financing and B2B payments, and in 2025 the Financial Times named Clara the region’s fastest-growing company. We’re passionate about helping every company we work with become more effective—and, through that, raising the region’s competitiveness. We’re ~400 people, backed by Notable Capital, Coatue, Kaszek, monashees, DST Global, ICONIQ, General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs, among others.
We are looking for a Staff DevOps Engineer who:
Responsibilities:
- Platform Leadership: Lead the design, adoption, and continuous improvement of the Internal Developer Platform (IDP), driving CI/CD pipeline standardization to increase deployment frequency and reduce Cycle Time.
- FinOps Strategy: Design and implement engineering FinOps strategy across AWS and other tooling, identifying cost-saving opportunities without compromising reliability.
- Container Orchestration: Operate and evolve our Kubernetes platform on Amazon EKS, supporting multi-country production workloads (MX/CO/BR).
- Event-Driven Infrastructure: Support and troubleshoot our Kafka/MSK-based event-driven architecture, used extensively across our microservices for async processing, notifications, and cross-service communication.
- Applied AI/Automation: Build and integrate MCP-based (Model Context Protocol) or other applied-AI solutions to automate log analysis and accelerate Root Cause Analysis (RCA) during incidents.
- Technical Advisory: Advise development teams on scalable, secure infrastructure design; identify and mitigate technical debt in legacy systems; support cross-team architectural reviews.
- Security & Access: Implement and maintain Least Privilege Access (IAM) models for both human and non-human identities, including peer review of policies.
- SSDLC: Strengthen the Secure Software Development Lifecycle through container standardization, secure base images, and pipeline hardening.
- Compliance & Audits: Lead technical compliance initiatives for audits, certifications (e.g., ISO 27001), local fintech regulations, and enterprise integration RFPs.
- Resilience: Design and implement multi-account, multi-region backup and recovery systems.
- Infrastructure as Code: Define and implement IaC for environment provisioning and management.
- Operations: Participate in on-call rotations, continuously improving MTTD/MTTR through effective monitoring and alerting.
- Mentorship: Provide technical support and mentorship to development teams adopting internal tooling (CLIs, container platforms, etc.).
Qualifications:
- Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Experience:
- 5+ years of experience in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or SRE roles, ideally in fintech or regulated environments.
- Strong experience with multi-account, multi-region AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, IAM, or equivalent services).
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes on Amazon EKS (cluster operations, scaling, networking, workload troubleshooting) in production.
- Experience with Apache Kafka / Amazon MSK in production: topic design, consumer group management, performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
- Experience leading or contributing to the build of Internal Developer Platforms (IDP) and CI/CD standardization (GitHub Actions, self-hosted runners, or similar).
- Experience in observability and incident management (Datadog or similar) and DORA metrics (Cycle Time, CFR, MTTR).
- Practical knowledge of cloud security: Least Privilege, SSDLC, and compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, or regional fintech regulations).
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code.
- Technical Skills: Ruby, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java; PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis; experience with our core stack of Java/Spring Boot microservices on Kubernetes (EKS) with Kafka/MSK for event-driven communication; familiarity with applying AI/LLMs to operational tasks (automated log analysis, MCPs, agents) is a plus.
Additional Skills & Pluses
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a strategic mindset.
- Quick learner, adaptable to changes and willing to shift directions as needed.
- Innate curiosity and an ability to thrive in an ambiguous and rapidly changing environment.
- Organizational skills to produce clear documentation and present to stakeholders.
- Native Spanish; intermediate-advanced English.
Where we work
This is a remote-first role: you'll work from home day to day. You'll ramp up in person with the team, and come together in person for team moments, events and customer visits through the year.
Why Clara
- A high talent-density team driven to make an impact in Latin America — low ego, high ownership.
- Competitive salary and stock options (ESOP) from day one.
- An annual learning budget and accelerated development paths.
- English is our working language, with Spanish and Portuguese every day.
- Clarity — Open and direct communication: we say what we mean and give context where it matters.
- Simplicity — If it can be simpler, it should be.
- Ownership — We own everything we do, end to end. When something needs to happen, we don't wait.
- Pride — We hold ourselves to a high standard, and it shows in what we deliver.
- ABC (Always Be Changing) — We adapt fast, embrace change, and keep learning.
- Inclusivity — Diverse ideas, stories and perspectives build a better Clara.
If you meet the must-haves, apply — the nice-to-haves are a bonus, not a requirement.
Clara San Francisco, California, USA Office
San Francisco, CA, United States
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