Ubicloud: Building an Open Source Alternative to AWS

Ubicloud, a Y Combinator W24 startup, is positioning itself as an open source alternative to AWS with a bold promise: reduce cloud costs by 3-10x through bare metal deployment. The company, founded in 2023, has already attracted 500+ customers to its managed cloud service and is now expanding its engineering team to accelerate development of key products including managed Postgres, GitHub Actions CI/CD, and AI inference capabilities.

The Open Source Cloud Challenge

The cloud infrastructure market has long been dominated by a handful of major players, with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud controlling the majority of market share. Ubicloud's approach is fundamentally different – they're building a cloud that can run anywhere, from bare metal providers like Hetzner and Leaseweb to traditional cloud environments.

This flexibility is central to their cost-reduction strategy. By deploying on bare metal rather than virtualized infrastructure, Ubicloud can eliminate the virtualization overhead that traditional cloud providers build into their pricing models. The company offers core services including elastic compute, block storage, virtual networking and firewalls, managed Postgres, and powerful IAM.

Engineering at Ubicloud

The company is specifically looking for mid-stage software engineers with 2-8 years of experience and the equivalent of a Computer Science degree. What sets their hiring approach apart is their emphasis on "slope over y-intercept" – they're more interested in a candidate's growth trajectory and potential than their current skill level.

For candidates with experience in managed Postgres or distributed inference architectures, there's particular interest. The AI inference team is exploring open source architectures like DeepSeek and Kimi, suggesting Ubicloud is positioning itself to compete in the increasingly important AI infrastructure space.

The Interview Process

Ubicloud has designed a thorough but efficient interview process. After initial screening, candidates go through five interviews in a single day covering coding proficiency, design skills, and team fit. The company is also considering adding an AI-assisted project session as an optional component, which would be compensated and scheduled at the end of the process.

This approach reflects the company's engineering culture – deliberate, structured, but also innovative in how they evaluate talent. The one-day interview format respects candidates' time while still providing comprehensive assessment.

Compensation and Location

Salaries range from $95,000 to $250,000 with equity grants between 0.15% and 0.50%. The company is primarily hiring for San Francisco, the Netherlands, and Turkey, with remote work options available. They're specifically looking for US citizens or those with visas, which suggests they're navigating the complexities of international hiring carefully.

Why This Matters

The cloud infrastructure market is ripe for disruption. While AWS and its competitors have driven massive innovation, their pricing models have created opportunities for alternatives that can offer similar capabilities at lower costs. Ubicloud's bare metal approach, combined with their open source model, could appeal to organizations looking to reduce cloud spending without sacrificing functionality.

Their focus on AI inference infrastructure is particularly timely. As organizations increasingly deploy AI models, the demand for specialized infrastructure that can handle inference workloads efficiently is growing rapidly. By building this capability into their platform from the start, Ubicloud is positioning itself at the intersection of cloud infrastructure and AI.

The Team Behind the Vision

With 15 team members and backing from Y Combinator, Ubicloud has the resources and credibility to execute on their ambitious vision. The founding team includes experienced entrepreneurs who understand both the technical and business challenges of building cloud infrastructure.

Their emphasis on growth mindset, customer feedback, and enabling teams to solve problems suggests a mature engineering culture that could attract top talent. In a competitive hiring market, this focus on culture and development opportunities may be as important as compensation.

For engineers interested in working on fundamental infrastructure problems with the potential for significant impact, Ubicloud represents an intriguing opportunity. They're not just building another cloud service – they're attempting to redefine how organizations think about cloud infrastructure and costs.

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