Software Engineering Lead, Infrastructure

Who Are We

Have you struggled to reserve that coveted summer camping spot at a state park Wondered why youre still filling out a paper form at the DMV Or tried (and failed) to book your favorite pickleball court from your phone

Kaizen Labs is rebuilding the governments digital front door - bringing modern people-first software to the public services millions of Americans rely on every day. From parks & recreation and permitting to licensing and payments were replacing outdated systems with intuitive beautiful technology designed for residents and the public servants who serve them.

Our platform now powers over 50 agencies across 17 states reaching more than 30 million residents. Recent partners include Maricopa County (AZ) San Bernardino County (CA) and the Cherokee Maryland our platform helped eliminate seven-mile traffic jams at state parks saving hundreds of thousands in costs and dramatically improving the visitor experience.

Founded in 2022 and based in New York City Kaizen has raised $35 million from world-class investors including NEA Andreessen Horowitz Accel 776 and Carpenter Capital.

Were a team of builders designers and operators redefining what it means to serve the public in the digital age - and were just getting started.

Location

This is a hybrid role based out of our New York City HQ. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to New York City to work out of our office at least three times a week (Tuesdays - Thursdays).

The Role

As our Infrastructure Lead youll be laying the foundation for this mission - building the systems that ensure our platform is scalable reliable and compliant. Youll be the person who takes us from a scrappy early-stage setup to infrastructure that can power thousands of municipalities across the country. If youre excited about building modern infrastructure from the ground up and making a real-world impact this role is for you.

You will be responsible for building and owning the infrastructure that underpins our platform - scaling load testing developer tooling monitoring and hosting support for customer environments (including high-compliance environments).

This is a highly technical role with leadership responsibility: 80% hands-on engineering and 20% people management. Youll collaborate closely with product teams to design robust developer tooling consolidate our cloud footprint and ensure our platform is reliable secure and ready to scale.

Technical Challenges Unique to This Role

• Building a modern infrastructure foundation from 01 starting at cloud provider setup Terraform Docker and Kubernetes (not yet in place).

• Scaling and load testing our systems as we expand to serve larger municipalities and compliance-heavy customers.

• Owning observability and monitoring tools (e.g. Datadog Sentry) to provide meaningful metrics dashboards and alerting.

• Supporting isolated hosting environments for compliance requirements.

• Creating developer tooling and CI/CD pipelines that enable fast reliable and safe deployments.

What Youll Do

• Build and execute the infrastructure roadmap defining priorities and driving adoption.

• Own and consolidate our cloud footprint.

• Manage infrastructure and observability tools (Datadog Sentry etc.) and expand their effectiveness.

• Collaborate with product engineers to build scalable dev tooling and CI/CD pipelines.

• Lead and mentor a small team while remaining a strong IC.

• Ensure compliance-ready infrastructure for government and other highly regulated environments.

• Make high-level architectural decisions to evolve our platform from early-stage infrastructure into enterprise-grade operations.

What Youll Bring

• 6 years of infrastructure or DevOps engineering experience.

• Proven experience building 01 cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP strongly preferred).

• Proficiency with Terraform Docker and Kubernetes (or equivalent cloud-native tools).

• Experience in high-compliance environments (government healthcare finance or public companies).

• Strong background in observability and monitoring (Datadog Sentry or similar).

• Comfortable leading projects and/or teams or owning complex infrastructure initiatives.

• A builder mentality: youve walked into messy infra setups and transformed them into scalable reliable systems.

• Familiar with (or excited to learn about) integrating AI-assisted coding and problem-solving tools into everyday development.

Strong Candidates May Also...

• Prior experience at an early-stage company where you were the first infra hire or helped scale a small infra team.

• Familiarity with multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategies.

Base Salary is $180k - $220k

At Kaizen we believe that great work starts with taking great care of our people. Were building something meaningful and that starts with a culture where people genuinely love to work. Heres how we support you - in and out of the workplace:

Comprehensive Health Coverage

We offer Silver Gold and Platinum PPO plans through Oxford (United) with 85% of premiums covered for employees on the Platinum plan with a $0 premium option

Dental Vision & Financial Wellness

Youre covered with Guardian PPO dental and Beam vision plans - Kaizen pays 99% of premiums for employees and 50% for dependents. We also offer:

• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA & Dependent Care FSA)

• $100000 in fully paid life insurance

• 401(k) access through Guideline

Parental Leave That Supports Families

Because time with your growing family matters.

• 16 weeks fully paid for birthing parents and 10 weeks paid for non-birthing parents

Everyday Support & Flexibility

• $50/month toward your commute

• One-time setup stipend (up to $750) for your home or NYC office

• $100/month for wellness or productivity

Perks That Make Life Better

• $250/year for recreation - because fun matters

• $500/year for professional development - because growth does too

• Expensed lunch three days a week when youre in the office

• Company-provided laptop

Time Off to Recharge

• Unlimited PTO

• All federal holidays off

• A company-wide winter break during the week of Christmas

At Kaizen were building something meaningful and that starts with a culture where people genuinely love to work. Come build with us.

The salary range listed represents the low and high end of Kaizens salary range for this position. Salary will vary depending on various factors including but not limited to location education skills experience and performance. The range listed is just one component of Kaizens total compensation package for employees and other forms of compensation may include annual bonuses commissions and equity grants.

Kaizen provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race color religion age sex national origin disability status genetics protected veteran status sexual orientation gender identity or expression or any other characteristic protected by federal state or local laws.

We are committed to maintaining a supportive and inclusive environment for people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We respect the varied identities abilities cultures and traditions of the individuals who comprise our organization and recognize the value that different backgrounds and points of view bring to our organization.

If you need assistance or an accommodations due to a disability please email us at . This information will be treated as confidential and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the interview process.