About Nominal
Engineers today are building some of the most ambitious machines humanity has ever seen. They should have AI that’s purpose-built for them.
Nominal is building the Hardware Intelligence Platform that gives engineers increased visibility into complex physical systems, helps them make better decisions, and ultimately gets their products into the real world faster. It brings together the systems, data, intelligence, and applications hardware engineering requires to meet the AI moment. Hardware engineering teams use Nominal to simulate, test, manufacture, and operate the physical systems that keep the world moving, from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation energy systems and robotics.
Our customers span aerospace, defense, manufacturing, transportation, energy, and robotics. They include Anduril, Shield AI, Wisk Aero, Pratt Miller Motorsports, Antares, and Shinkei Systems, amongst others, alongside programs within the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Our team draws from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, Tesla, and other leading companies, united by a common mission: giving hardware engineers the tools to build the future with speed, safety, and confidence. We're a fast-moving team that owns problems end-to-end, works across disciplines, and thrives at the intersection of hardware and software.
Some of the world’s leading technology investors, including Sequoia, Lightspeed, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, and Insight Partners, are backing Nominal’s ambition to change how machines are built and operated. We’re looking for engineers who want to take on hard problems and help make a new generation of world-changing hardware possible.
The role, and why it matters
Most of our customers run Nominal in our multi-tenant cloud but for many of the programs we support, data classification and security requirements mean Nominal has to run inside the customer’s own boundary. That might be their own cloud account, a server on a rack in a test-range control room, a NomBox appliance we pre-build and ship, or a classified facility where nothing goes in or out except on approved media.
The Deployability team owns how Nominal gets there, and our goal is simple: cut the time from “signed” to “engineers looking at live data” from weeks to hours. When we get it right, a flight test stays on the calendar, a production line keeps moving, and a test team gets an answer before the window closes. When we get it wrong, a program slips.
About the role
- Deploy Nominal where the mission is: Install, upgrade and support Nominal across bare-metal and NomBox appliances, air-gapped facilities, self-hosted cloud, BYOC, and our multi-tenant environment.
- Work on-site: Travel to test ranges, manufacturing floors and air-gapped data centers. Sit with customer engineering and IT teams, get the system running, and leave them confident operating it.
- Run the preflight: Before anyone gets on a plane, nail down sizing, network shape, disk layout, certificates, identity and data paths so the onsite visit is execution, not discovery.
- Automate yourself out of the hard parts: Build installers, deployment kits, preflight checks, upgrade paths and release-to-box tests that cut deploy time and make every install repeatable.
- Own the operational story: Write the runbooks, support bundles and handoff packages so the next deployment, and the customer’s own team, doesn’t depend on you being in the room.
- Shape the roadmap: Bring field reality back to product and platform engineering. Surface risks early and help decide what we build next.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of experience: operating production infrastructure, distributed systems, or platforms, with hands-on experience deploying and supporting software in on-prem, edge, restricted, or air-gapped environments.
- Deep Kubernetes expertise: You've installed, operated, upgraded, and debugged clusters across environments, from managed services like EKS to self-hosted and bare-metal deployments. You're comfortable troubleshooting stateful workloads, working within customer network and security constraints, and getting to root cause.
- Strong Linux fundamentals: You understand networking, storage, systemd, certificates, package management, and hardening on bare metal.
- Infrastructure as code: Experience with Helm, Terraform, Ansible, or similar tools, and a habit of turning manual fixes into repeatable automation.
- Compliance awareness: Familiarity with image hardening, CVE remediation, STIGs, FIPS, FedRAMP, or Impact Levels, and the judgment to build systems that meet security and accreditation requirements.
- Customer tact: You can walk into a customer's control room, earn the trust of their IT team, set clear boundaries and expectations, and deliver difficult news early and plainly.
- Adaptability: You can re-plan when priorities shift and stay calm and creative when the environment doesn't match the plan.
- Outcome ownership: You measure success by whether the customer's program succeeds, not simply whether your task is closed.
What You'll Face
- No internet: In air-gapped environments, every image, chart, and package arrives on approved media. There are no metrics flowing back to us, no remote sessions, and no vendor support in the room. You're the support.
- Hardware you've never see: Every site brings a different combination of servers, disks, NICs, hypervisors, IP plans, and certificate authorities. Some environments have no DHCP, DNS, or NTP, and a slow network connection may be your only way in.
- Kubernetes across every environment: Whether in customer clouds, self-hosted clusters, or on bare metal, you'll install, upgrade, and debug Nominal using Kubectl, often within someone else's network and security constraints and without the managed services you'd typically rely on.
- Upgrades on someone else's schedule: Patching a disconnected cluster means managing bundles, transfers, approvals, and a rollback plan you trust.
- Shifting priorities: A launch window moves, a customer's network changes the week before you arrive, or a higher-priority deployment lands on your desk. The plan changes; the outcome doesn't.
- Security clearance:You must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance. An active Secret or Top Secret clearance is strongly preferred.
- Travel: Up to 50% travel to customer sites, including test ranges, manufacturing facilities, and air-gapped data centers. Travel is typically organized into multi-day trips, with most trips within the U.S.
Skills that supercharge us
- Unix/Linux systems administration
- Kubernetes and Kubectl
- Helm, Replicated/KOTS
- MinIO and S3 object storage
- PostgreSQL
- Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, and Mimir observability stack
- Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible)
- VMware or Hyper-V
Benefits/Perks
- 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
- ️ Unlimited PTO and sick leave
- ️ Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
- Professional Development Stipend
- ️ In-office hardware lab with a $250 project stipend
- ️ Annual company retreat
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.
ITAR Requirements
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.