Jobs Companies Nectar Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure

About this Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure role at Nectar

Nectar · Hybrid · Palo Alto, CA

About Us

We're living through a fundamental shift in how people discover, evaluate, and purchase products. The next generation doesn't respond to traditional marketing -- they build relationships with brands through authentic social interactions, seek recommendations from communities they trust, and expect personalized experiences that feel human, not corporate.

At Nectar Social, we're building the AI-native social operating system that enables this new era of commerce. We believe every social interaction should deepen the relationship between brands and their communities while creating genuine value for both sides.

Founded by ex-Meta product and engineering leaders, we've raised over $30M in total capital from investors including GV and True Ventures. We work with brands like Oura Health, Caraway, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Kosas, OLIPOP, and many more. We're building the future of social commerce -- where community, conversation, and commerce converge.

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure to own the reliability, scalability, and operational excellence of the production systems that power Nectar's platform. We run high-volume data ingestion pipelines and real-time AI agents on top of a fast-growing customer base, and we need a seasoned SRE to help us scale these systems safely and keep them running flawlessly.

As one of our first dedicated SREs, you'll have outsized impact and ownership. You'll define how we measure, operate, and harden our infrastructure -- establishing the reliability foundations that the rest of the engineering team builds on as we scale.

What You'll Be Doing

  • Own the reliability and scalability of our production systems as they handle rapidly growing volumes of social data and real-time AI workloads

  • Define and drive SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets, and build the observability, alerting, and on-call practices to support them

  • Lead incident response and blameless postmortems, then turn what we learn into systemic improvements that prevent recurrence

  • Improve performance, cost efficiency, and capacity planning across our cloud infrastructure as the platform scales

  • Harden our infrastructure-as-code, deployment, and CI/CD pipelines for resilience and repeatability

  • Partner with engineering teams to embed reliability into system design and raise the operational bar across the org

What We're Looking For

  • 5+ years of experience operating production systems as an SRE, infrastructure, or platform engineer

  • Experience scaling databases, data infrastructure, or complex production platforms under significant load

  • Hands-on expertise with cloud infrastructure (AWS or similar) and infrastructure-as-code tooling

  • Solid programming skills for building automation, tooling, and operational services

  • Comfortable operating in fast-moving startup environments with high ownership and autonomy

  • A reliability-first mindset balanced with pragmatism about velocity and cost

Bonus Points

  • Experience standing up or maturing an SRE practice at an early-stage or rapidly scaling company

  • Familiarity with our tech stack: AWS, Pulumi, Postgres, ClickHouse, Turbopuffer, or Temporal

  • Background in capacity planning, performance engineering, or cost optimization at scale

What We Offer

  • Competitive compensation and early equity

  • Health, vision, and dental benefits + 401(k) match

  • Hybrid work schedule (4 days in office) with 3 flex remote days per quarter (available after 3 months)

  • Comprehensive stipends: $1,000/month housing stipend for living near the office, $50/month mobile stipend, $50/month internet stipend for remote employees, and commuter benefits (train stipend or Palo Alto parking permit reimbursement)

  • Free lunch in the heart of University Ave. in Palo Alto

Ready to apply to Nectar?
Apply to Nectar

How this Software Engineer salary compares

This role pays $250,000/yrin line with the typical range for Software Engineer roles.

$147,500 median $207,500 $310,000

Typical range $167,500–$256,063/yr, from 108 comparable Software Engineer listings on JobsRadar (pay annualized to USD). See Software Engineer salary insights →

Similar jobs

Pinterest
Staff Software Engineer, Data Warehouse Foundation
Pinterest
⚡ Apply early Palo Alto, CA, US; Remote, US · location restricted $177,185–$364,795
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 1d ago
Pinterest
Software Engineer II, Big Data, tvScientific
Pinterest
⚡ Apply early San Francisco, CA, US; Remote,... · location restricted $123,696–$254,667
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 1d ago
Pinterest
Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Merchants
Pinterest
⚡ Apply early San Francisco, CA, US; Palo Al... Onsite $245,402–$429,454
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 1d ago
xAI
Software Engineer, Observability
xAI
⚡ Apply early Palo Alto, CA Onsite $180,000–$440,000
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 2d ago
xAI
Software Engineer, X Money
xAI
⚡ Apply early Palo Alto, CA Onsite $180,000–$440,000
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 2d ago
xAI
Software Engineer, Data Platform
xAI
⚡ Apply early Palo Alto, CA Onsite $180,000–$440,000
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 2d ago
Caterpillar
Senior AEM Software Engineer
Caterpillar
⚡ Apply early Peoria, Illinois Onsite $112,710–$183,140
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 13m ago
Sandvik
5-Axis CNC Programmer
Sandvik
⚡ Apply early USA, TX, Houston Onsite
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 40m ago
Sandvik
Software Developer (CAD/CAM)
Sandvik
⚡ Apply early India, Pune Onsite
● New 👁 Seen ✓ Applied 40m ago

Sign up for suggestions tailored to the jobs you open and the searches you save.

More jobs at Nectar

See all jobs at Nectar →

Apply now
🤖

Whoa — hold up

JobsRadar was built for real people having a rough time in their job search — not for automated requests. You're clicking way too fast and you're now temporarily blocked.

Come back later. If you're genuinely job hunting, we've got your back — just act like a human.

Catch your next role the second it’s posted.

Create a free account and we’ll watch the boards for you — the instant a job matches your search, it lands in your inbox or Telegram. No digging, no refreshing.

Create free account

Free forever · takes 30 seconds · already have one?

Get an edge on your job hunt.

Join our Telegram channel for the stuff that helps you land the role — salary benchmarks, the weekly market pulse, and new-feature drops. No spam, just signal.

Join the channel — it's free