Pluto — Founding AI Infrastructure Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site | New York City, NY Compensation: $250,000–$300,000 + 0.50%–1.00% equity Hiring count: 1 Visa sponsorship: None available — US citizen or permanent resident only Reports to: Alexander, CEO & Co-Founder (no LinkedIn provided)

About Pluto

Pluto is building a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange to trade GPU compute, positioning itself on the same regulatory footing as the CME and other licensed futures exchanges. It buys GPU hours from neoclouds and resells them to startups in its network, while building the software infrastructure to make compute procurement programmable and liquid. Six-person team, YC Winter 2025, with CFTC futures exchange licensing in process.

Founded: 2024 | Team size: 6 | Total funding: N/A (Seed, YC W2025) Industry: FinTech Website: https://pluto.trade Office: New York City, NY

Why Candidates Should Join

• Found the technical backbone: No existing playbook — this person defines how Pluto's entire compute infrastructure is built.
• Genuinely new market: A CFTC-regulated futures exchange for GPU compute, on CME-tier regulatory footing — a category that doesn't exist yet.
• Strong founding team: Works alongside engineers with backgrounds from Meta, NVIDIA, and AWS; reports directly to the founders.
• Early equity, early stage: YC W2025, seed stage, 0.50%–1.00% equity.

Intake Call Summary

Not available in source. An intake video is present on the role page, but no transcript or written summary was included in the copied HTML.

The Role

A founding engineering role at the intersection of GPU infrastructure and financial market technology. The engineer owns the technical backbone of Pluto's compute business — the abstraction layer that homogenizes GPU capacity from multiple providers into a unified interface, and the control-plane systems that let customers provision, manage, and pay for clusters through Pluto.

What You'll Be Doing

• Design and build the customer-facing compute API for provisioning and managing GPU clusters across multiple neocloud providers
• Build the abstraction layer that normalizes fragmented GPU capacity from different providers into a unified Pluto resource model
• Own control-plane systems for cluster orchestration, lifecycle management, and state tracking
• Integrate with GPU providers and neoclouds through APIs, Kubernetes, Slurm, and bare-metal and semi-automated workflows
• Build internal tooling to replace manual brokerage workflows with repeatable, scalable software systems
• Develop metering and usage-tracking infrastructure for GPU-hours and customer billing

Tech stack: Python, Go, Rust, or TypeScript; Kubernetes, Slurm, GPU provisioning workflows; APIs and distributed systems

Requirements

• 3+ years GPU infrastructure or platform engineering experience
• Low-level GPU familiarity: kernels, Slurm, Kubernetes
• Neocloud or HFT background strongly preferred
• US citizen or permanent resident only
• NYC in-person, startup hours (995)

Green Flags

• Neocloud or GPU infrastructure background
• HFT firm experience
• Strong tenure and deliberate career progression
• Big tech background with production ownership

Red Flags

• Excessive job hopping
• No hands-on GPU or low-level infrastructure experience
• Not authorized to work in the US

Role Details

• Salary — $250,000–$300,000
• Equity — 0.50%–1.00%
• On-site policy — NYC in-person, startup hours Mon–Fri 9am–9pm (995)
• Visa sponsorship — None available; US citizen or permanent resident only
• Employment type — Full-time
• Location — New York City, NY

Screening Questions

Not provided in source.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval. Stage 2 — Intro call with Alexander (CEO) — Initial conversation to assess fit and walk through the role. Stage 3 — Technical interview with CTO — First technical deep-dive with Zhang, lead backend engineer and CTO. Stage 4 — Second technical interview with CTO — Second technical round with the CTO. Stage 5 — In-person team dinner or event — Vibe check with the full team in New York. Stage 6 — Offer Extended Stage 7 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.

Ideal Companies & Backgrounds

No formal Ideal Companies section was provided in source. Named signal companies pulled from the role body (for sourcing reference only): Neoclouds — CoreWeave, Lambda HFT firms — SIG, Optiver Big tech — Meta, NVIDIA, AWS