The retrieval engine built for agents
Hornet is an ambitious startup building the next generation of retrieval infrastructure. Our engine powers agentic systems with an API surface that agents can configure, deploy, feed, query, and optimize autonomously. Building on battle-tested technology, serving billions of users, petabytes of data, and millions of requests per second, we're rethinking retrieval for the agentic era.
We have an office in the Bay Area to tap into market opportunities in the region, while the engineering team is based in Trondheim. We serve enterprise clients globally, enabling them to get quality work done with agents.
The role
We are looking for a Cloud Operations Architect to help expand and operate the infrastructure that powers Hornet Cloud.
You will be part of designing, operating, and continuously improving the cloud infrastructure that runs our retrieval platform at scale. This includes managing multi-tenant distributed systems that process large volumes of data and queries in real time.
This role sits at the intersection of infrastructure engineering, reliability engineering, and developer productivity. You will work closely with leadership and the core engineering team to ensure that Hornet runs reliably, scales efficiently, and can be deployed confidently across cloud environments.
You will help define how retrieval infrastructure for agents is operated and scaled in production.
What you'll do
- Design, deploy, and operate the cloud infrastructure that powers the Hornet retrieval engine
- Build and maintain reliable deployment pipelines and infrastructure automation
- Monitor system performance, reliability, and resource usage
- Debug and resolve production issues across services, infrastructure, and cloud environments
- Improve system observability through logging, metrics, tracing, and monitoring
- Continuously improve reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency
- Develop internal tooling that improves developer productivity and operational workflows
As Hornet Cloud becomes the backbone for mission-critical agentic applications, "always-on" is a requirement. In this role, you will:
- Lead the strategy for 24/7 operations, focusing on self-healing systems and automated failovers to minimize manual intervention
- Participate in a sustainable on-call rotation, while actively working to "engineer your way out of the pager" through root-cause analysis and long-term toil reduction, including creating agentic workflows to automatically mitigate incidents
- Help define our incident response framework, monitoring standards, and SLAs to ensure we meet the high uptime demands of our global customer base
- Determine how we build and mentor a world-class operations team capable of supporting systems across multiple time zones
What we're looking for
- 10+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure, SRE, or operations engineering roles
- Strong experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Experience operating distributed database systems at scale
- Fluent with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or similar
- Strong familiarity with containerized systems and orchestration platforms (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)
- Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and deployment systems
- Strong debugging skills across infrastructure, networking, and application layers
- Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability tools
- Comfortable with using coding agents and modern AI tooling to accelerate operational workflows
- Experience with scripting or programming languages such as Python, Go, or Bash
Who we're looking for
- Unshakeable: High-agency executors who move fast but think deeply
- Curious: Quick learners who take time to listen, question, and explore
- Pragmatists: You focus on practical solutions that improve real-world systems
- Excellence: A passion for quality craftsmanship with a track record of top performance
- Resourcefulness: Proactive, independent, and able to drive projects forward from day one
What we offer
- Work on foundational infrastructure for the next generation of AI systems
- A small, highly capable engineering team where your work has immediate impact
- Direct exposure to cutting-edge enterprise AI deployments with global customers
- An office-centric culture that prioritizes output and responsibility over rigid schedules
- Competitive salary and equity stake
To apply
Ready to build retrieval infrastructure for the AI era? Send your CV and a brief cover letter about why you are a great fit for this role.
