Platform Engineer, Bare Metal

Summary

Vultr is on a mission to make high-performance cloud infrastructure easy to use, affordable, and locally accessible for enterprises and AI innovators. They are seeking a highly skilled Platform Engineer, Bare Metal to build and automate the infrastructure that powers Vultr’s bare metal cloud platform, focusing on enhancing deployment speed and integration with existing systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and build the next-generation bare metal deployment pipeline to achieve sub-60-second provisioning times
• Develop and maintain Vultr’s bare metal automation and management toolkit
• Implement automated firmware update workflows across the bare metal fleet using IPMI/BMC protocols
• Build and optimize kexec-based fast boot and provisioning flows to minimize deployment latency
• Integrate cloud-init and instance metadata service for bare metal, enabling consistent configuration across VM and BM products
• Develop Puppet and Ansible modules for bare metal server configuration and lifecycle management
• Architect and implement VPC networking for bare metal instances, including network attach and routing automation
• Collaborate with the Provisioning and Orchestration teams to unify OS image pipelines and ensure bare metal integrates cleanly with Vultr’s reservation and assignment systems

Skills

• 3+ years of experience in platform engineering, systems engineering, or infrastructure automation
• Hands-on experience with bare metal server provisioning, including IPMI/BMC, PXE boot, and firmware management
• Strong Linux systems engineering skills, deep understanding of the boot process, initramfs, kernel command line, and device configuration
• Proficiency in PHP for backend service development in a LAMP environment
• Experience using Redfish (or similar tools)
• Experience building or maintaining instance metadata services or cloud-init integrations
• Familiarity with automated configuration management tools (Puppet, Ansible, or equivalent)
• Ability to debug hardware and software issues across the full stack, from BMC firmware to application layer, and strong communication skills for cross-team collaboration in a remote environment
• Nice to have proficiency in Rust

Qualifications

Must Haves

• 3+ years of experience in platform engineering, systems engineering, or infrastructure automation
• Hands-on experience with bare metal server provisioning, including IPMI/BMC, PXE boot, and firmware management
• Strong Linux systems engineering skills, deep understanding of the boot process, initramfs, kernel command line, and device configuration
• Proficiency in PHP for backend service development in a LAMP environment
• Experience using Redfish (or similar tools)
• Experience building or maintaining instance metadata services or cloud-init integrations
• Familiarity with automated configuration management tools (Puppet, Ansible, or equivalent)
• Ability to debug hardware and software issues across the full stack, from BMC firmware to application layer, and strong communication skills for cross-team collaboration in a remote environment

Nice to Haves

• Nice to have proficiency in Rust

Benefits

• 100% company-paid insurance premiums for employee medical, dental and vision plans.
• 401(k) plan that matches 100% up to 4%, with immediate vesting
• Professional Development Reimbursement of $2,500 each year
• 11 Holidays + Paid Time Off Accrual + Rollover Plan
• Commitment matters to Vultr! Increased PTO at 3 year and 10 year anniversary + 1 month paid sabbatical every 5 years + Anniversary Bonus each year
• $500 stipend for remote office setup in first year + $400 each following year
• Internet reimbursement up to $75 per month
• Gym membership reimbursement up to $50 per month
• Company paid Wellable subscription