Buildkite's IT team is small. This hire grows it, and it's the first one based in the Americas
The split is roughly 60% operational support, 40% engineering today, and we expect it to tip toward engineering as we automate the repetitive tasks out of existence. We're publishing that number rather than burying it, because the engineering half is real work and not a someday
We're not looking for someone to take tickets and provision devices. We're looking for someone who treats IT as an engineering problem — who automates instead of accepting manual work, builds systems instead of patching them, and documents as they go rather than as an afterthought
Two things make this role different from the IT job you're picturing
You'll be building with AI, and we're hiring for it directly. This isn't a role where AI is a nice-to-have you'll pick up as you go. We expect you to already work this way — shipping automation, integrations, and internal tooling with these tools in hand every day, in repos, through pull requests. What we care about is the judgement that remains once the tools are doing the typing: framing the problem before you delegate it, reading and questioning what comes back, and verifying behaviour rather than trusting appearance. We assess that directly, in a live working session, not by asking you about it
You'll be rolling out AI tooling to the company. We're deploying Serval, an AI-native ITSM platform, to handle first-line support and access requests in Slack. Standing that up — the workflows, the knowledge sources, and the guardrails on what an agent is allowed to do unsupervised — is live work you'd co-own early on. Deciding where automation should stop is as much of the job as making it work
You'll report to the IT Engineering Manager (based in Melbourne, Australia) and work closely with Engineering, Security, and People Ops
You're not inheriting a mess, and you're not starting from zero. The foundations are solid and the team is three people — which means you'll spend your time extending things that work, and you'll have real say in what gets built next
Your internal customers are mostly engineers who care about good tooling and will absolutely notice the difference between something well-built and something bolted together. That raises the bar — in the best way
Where You’ll Be
Pacific or Mountain time zone
Our engineering team is global, but IT coverage has been APAC-only. That means a developer in San Francisco with a blocked deployment at 10am has been waiting until late afternoon for help
You'd be the person who closes that gap — the first point of IT contact for the Americas, with real autonomy because there's nobody in your time zone to escalate to. That's the honest trade: more independence than most IT roles, and more genuine ownership, because for a good part of your day you are IT
You'll have solid overlap with the rest of the team in your afternoons, and we run async properly — being the only person awake doesn't mean being the only person supported
Own day-to-day operational support: devices, SaaS admin, access management, and troubleshooting across a globally distributed team
Build and maintain automation for access provisioning, onboarding, offboarding, and common support workflows
Contribute to IaC using Terraform or similar tooling for SaaS configuration management
Design and build API and webhook integrations across our internal tooling stack
Mature device trust, compliance tooling, and endpoint management
Collaborate with Security, Platform Engineering, and People Ops on projects that span team boundaries
Document as you work — not as a separate task at the end
A Typical Week
Monday morning: you're first up in your region, so you triage what came in overnight and unblock two people in Slack. Afternoon: overlap with the APAC team, review a PR for the automation you've been building. Tuesday: provision a device, then a focused block wiring up a Serval workflow for access requests — and working out which ones it should not be allowed to approve on its own
You'll context-switch between reactive support and focused engineering work, often in the same day. Both sides of the role are real from day one
This Is You If You Have...
SaaS platform administration and identity provider management
macOS device management and MDM experience
SSO, SAML, and SCIM configuration and troubleshooting
Strong written communication for async, remote-first work
Access lifecycle management: onboarding and offboarding experience
Scripting ability — you've actually built things, not just patched them