Software Engineer: Infra Focus [100%] Zurich Hybrid

About You

As a Software Engineer (Infra Focus), you will own the infrastructure backbone that keeps Optiml's platform fast, reliable, and ready to scale—operating at the intersection of backend engineering and cloud infrastructure, where your decisions directly shape how the product is built and shipped.

This is a hands-on engineering role: you will manage and evolve Optiml's GCP infrastructure, drive CI/CD and release processes end-to-end, and contribute directly to the codebase on core systems like RBAC and job queues. You are as comfortable in a Python codebase as you are configuring IAM policies or leading an incident response.

You are expected to be proactive and opinionated—identifying infrastructure debt before it becomes a problem, setting a pragmatic direction for the platform, and executing without waiting to be asked. You bring reliability and composure to production systems, and the clarity and communication skills to bring the rest of the team with you.

About Optiml

Optiml is transforming real estate with Real Estate Decision Intelligence (REDI), an AI-powered decision technology that helps decarbonize buildings while optimizing asset and portfolio financial performance.

Our platform helps investors, owners, and asset managers make clearer capital allocation and decarbonisation decisions by translating complex regulatory, financial, and technical constraints into actionable renovation and investment plans.

Founded as an ETH Zurich spin-off, Optiml launched its first product in April 2024 and is now scaling across Europe and the US, with teams based in Zurich, London, and across Germany. The company is backed by leading US and European investors, including Innovation Endeavors (the fund of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt), Planet A Ventures, KOMPAS, BitStone Capital, and The Bau Ventures. Following an oversubscribed €8M Seed round, we are accelerating product development and go-to-market execution

Tasks

Responsibilities

• Set infrastructure direction: identify the highest-leverage problems, scope projects, and drive the team to solve them.
• Collaborate and implement new features in the codebase (Python + Typescript) that touch the core infrastructure (e.g. RBAC, Job Queues)
• Own and operate Optiml's GCP infrastructure (Cloud Run, networking, IAM, TLS, and firewall rules)
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment workflows, and developer experience.
• Own and push to simplify the release process end-to-end: staging, E2E tests, QA, production deployment, rollbacks, and communication.
• Run on-call and incident response: manage rotations, enforce severity processes, and ensure uptime.
• Partner with IT/Security on vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and infrastructure hardening.
• Close documentation gaps and improve observability & monitoring.

What this role is NOT

• Not a Kubernetes/platform engineering role.
• Not focused on Terraform-heavy infrastructure-as-code
• Not a pure DevOps “pipeline-only” roleThis is a hands-on engineering role at the intersection of backend and infrastructure.

Requirements

Who we are looking for

• Embrace Challenges: You prioritize speed and flexibility, adept at making swift compromises to maintain momentum in a startup environment.
• Push The Limits: You proactively identify bottlenecks and infrastructure debt, then drive the fixes without waiting to be asked.
• Inspire Others: You bring kindness and humor to the team, enhancing both morale and collaboration.
• Champion Reliability: Your attention to detail ensures production systems are stable, releases are smooth, and incidents are handled with composure.
• Set The Direction: You're opinionated about how infrastructure should work and can articulate a pragmatic vision for the platform's evolution.

Must have

• BSc/MSc in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, or platform engineering roles.
• Strong experience with a major cloud platform (preferably GCP), including compute, storage, networking, IAM, and container-based deployments.
• Solid experience building, optimizing, and managing containerized applications (e.g., Docker or similar)
• Proficiency in Python and ability to work within production backend or data-oriented codebases.
• Experience working with databases in production environments (e.g., MongoDB, Redis), with an understanding of performance, scaling, and reliability considerations.
• Experience scaling distributed workloads using metrics, queues, or event-driven approaches.
• Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for automated build, test, and deployment (e.g., GitHub Actions or similar).
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Swiss or EU citizenship (unfortunately due to size, we can't support non-EU).

Nice to have

• Experience with compute-intensive or scientific simulation workloads.
• Interest in climate tech, sustainability, or the built environment.

Benefits

Impact: Drive Optiml’s growth in London—one of Europe’s most important institutional real estate hubs.

️ Ownership: Real responsibility over UK target accounts and outcomes: build pipeline, progress enterprise cycles, and close new customers—while scaling independence over time with coaching.

Growth: Work directly with founders and senior commercial leaders; collaborate cross-functionally with Product/Tech, Delivery/CS, and Marketing/Comms to influence roadmap, narrative, and enterprise rollouts.

Culture: Join a collaborative, high-performance team that values ownership over hierarchy—clear accountability, direct feedback, and high trust. Benefits (London): Competitive base salary with meaningful variable and (tbd) VSOP participation; hybrid setup in London; learning & development budget; and travel as needed for clients and events.