Head of Infrastructure Engineering - Stealth Aviation Safety Intelligence Startup

UP.Labs is hiring a hands-on Head of Infrastructure for Scout, an AI-powered safety intelligence platform built in partnership with Alaska Airlines. The industry is high-stakes, tightly regulated, and still runs on reactive, form-based reporting.
The core problem: safety teams are fighting yesterday's incidents. Frontline reports pile up faster than analysts can triage them, the pattern that mattered is usually visible only in hindsight, and the systems built to catch risk before it becomes a catastrophic incident were built for compliance checklists, not prevention.
We're building the platform that fixes this - replacing slow, dropdown-based reporting with a real-time intelligence layer. Frontline employees report by voice, photo, or text, and Scout classifies, triages, and links related reports across workgroups so analysts spend their time on prevention, not paperwork. Built for aviation compliance (FAA Part 121, Safety Management System workflows), with Alaska Airlines live in production with more airline partnerships in the pipeline
As the first dedicated infrastructure leader, you'll own architecture, cloud infrastructure, and data infrastructure as the team moves from stabilization into production scale. You'll take over ownership of hardware, cloud, and systems work currently split across the existing engineering team, build the technical foundation to support enterprise customers at scale, and set the long-term infrastructure direction as Scout expands beyond its first airline partner. You'll also have access to the UP.Partners ecosystem - product, engineering, design, analytics, legal, talent, finance, and VC - to help accelerate execution.
In this role, you will:

• Own Scout's cloud infrastructure end-to-end on Azure, including compute, networking, identity, storage, and cost/scaling decisions.
• Architect and evolve the platform's infrastructure to support production-scale reliability as Scout moves from single-customer stabilization to multi-airline, multi-industry deployment.
• Design and own infrastructure-as-code practices, CI/CD pipelines, and observability across the platform.
• Support the data infrastructure layer, including the pipeline between Scout's application and its Databricks data layer.
• Lead load testing, performance, and reliability work ahead of and following production launch.
• Build toward compliance-ready infrastructure as Scout works toward SOC 2 and ISO certifications over the next 18 months.
• Partner closely with the Head of Engineering and existing team to take direct ownership of infrastructure work currently split across multiple people.
• Establish security, backup, and disaster-recovery practices appropriate for an enterprise B2B platform serving safety-critical customers.
• Manage vendor and cost relationships tied to cloud and infrastructure spend as the company scales.

Who you are:

• A technical leader who has owned cloud infrastructure end-to-end at a lean, high-growth startup - not just executed within an already-built platform team's architecture.
• Deep, hands-on with Microsoft Azure specifically - this is a hard requirement, not "cloud generally."
• Hands-on and detail-oriented, comfortable making the actual architecture and design calls rather than implementing someone else's.
• Experienced operating with a very small infrastructure team (1-3 people owning everything), not a large infra org with specialized sub-teams.
• Comfortable in ambiguous, high-growth startup environments where priorities shift as the product moves from stabilization to scale.
• Collaborative - able to work closely with engineering, data, and leadership, and to take over ownership of work currently spread across a small team without friction.

You should have:

• Significant experience owning infrastructure/platform engineering, ideally at Director, Head of Infrastructure, Principal, or Staff level (title matters less than scope owned).
• Deep Azure expertise across compute, networking, identity, and storage - non-negotiable for this role.
• Strong architecture experience - real design ownership, such as leading a cloud migration, designing infrastructure from scratch at an early-stage company, or owning infra-as-code strategy end-to-end. This is a major plus.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep, or ARM), CI/CD, and observability tooling.
• Familiarity with data infrastructure and pipelines (Databricks experience a plus, not required).
• Experience building toward compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001) from an infrastructure/security standpoint is a strong plus.
• Comfortable owning cost and scaling decisions independently in a lean team.
• No specific industry background required - aviation, safety, or EHS domain experience is a nice to have, but not a factor for this role.

Why Join Us:

• Own infrastructure for a platform already live in production with a major airline customer, expanding into additional airline and industry partnerships.
• Take a system through the transition from single-customer stabilization to enterprise scale, with real architectural ownership from day one.
• Work directly with Scout's CEO and Head of Engineering as the infrastructure voice in the room - not behind the glass.
• Collaborate with UP.Labs, strategic partners, and investors to drive real impact in aviation and adjacent high-risk industries.
• Earn meaningful equity in a company positioned to transform how high-risk industries prevent catastrophic incidents.
• Remote-friendly. We care about output, not location.

About UP.Labs: We build high-growth technology startups that enable faster, cleaner, and safer movement of people and goods. Our platform is unique in three ways:

• Risk: We reward our entire team and ecosystem of partners with meaningful equity.
• Technology: We build and launch scalable technology products that form the basis for each venture.
• Industry Focus: We stay focused on the underlying fabric of retail mobility.

We work with corporate investors over a multi-year period to launch a portfolio of ventures. Our team is dedicated to the first year of a new venture's life cycle: from ideation to MVP build - and beyond.