Senior Software Engineer - Platform

Senior Software Engineer – Platform

Remote (US)

Up to $250K + Equity

This is a rare opportunity to get in at the ground-floor at a category-defining company: they are building the runtime control layer for AI agents — one of the hottest emerging categories in cybersecurity. You'd be the first key engineering hire shaping the platform from scratch.

My client is a VC backed start up with strong backing and a lean team: $5M seed from SYN Ventures, Antler, and Boost. Your contributions will have outsized ownership and equity upside.

Flexibility: Remote-friendly with optional hybrid in SF.

Competitive comp: $175K–$250K base salary plus meaningful early-stage equity with a 1-year cliff and generous vesting schedule.

What we are looking for:

We need someone with 5+ years of experience in backend/platform engineering who has built production infrastructure at a cybersecurity, networking, or cloud infrastructure company. You should be comfortable working in an early-stage startup environment with high ambiguity and have a track record of shipping reliable, distributed systems end-to-end. Bonus points if you have product sensibility and aspire to grow into a technical leadership or management track.

What you'll do:

• Build backend services for agent connections, tool access, execution records, and control workflows using Go, Java, or Rust
• Take ownership of production paths where authentication, state, latency, and failure handling matter — including on-prem/hybrid deployments (control plane on our side, data plane on customer side)
• Design APIs and data models that make agent activity reliable and understandable as the product scales
• Work closely with the CTO and founding team to shape product direction and turn ambiguous problems into working software
• Set a high engineering bar through code review, technical mentorship, and clear implementation choices
• Help build out the engineering team over time — this is the first targeted platform hire, with IC engineers to follow

Ideal background:

• Experience at companies like Okta, Ngrok, Redis, Zscaler, Elastic, Confluent, Firebase, AWS, GCP, or Azure — specifically on core infrastructure/networking services
• Strong in Go (preferred), Java, or Rust with deep understanding of concurrency primitives and distributed systems
• Experience with cloud primitives, on-prem/hybrid deployments, and gateway/proxy infrastructure
• Career trajectory that includes some big tech (up to SD2/3) followed by transition to Series A-C startups
• Product-minded engineer who can structure work, drive features end-to-end, and eventually help build a team

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in backend/infrastructure engineering at B2B or security companies
• Experience at a cybersecurity, networking infrastructure, or API gateway company (e. g. Okta, Ngrok, Zscaler, F5, Confluent, Elastic)
• Built/operated distributed backend services on cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure) or hybrid/on- prem deployments — control plane vs. data plane thinking, running clusters, cloud primitives
• B2B enterprise product experience — has shipped platform software for regulated industries (defense, banking, insurance); consumer- facing or hardware backgrounds are a no- go
• Startup experience (seed–Series C) — has thrived in 0→1 / 1→2 environments
• On- prem or hybrid deployment experience (control plane / data plane)
• Computer Science degree required
• Proficient in Go, Java, or Rust (not just Python)
• Distributed systems (clusters, distributed networking/compute)
• Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Concurrency primitives
• Identity/auth/gateway systems or MCP familiarity

Why you should join

Report directly to the CTO/co-founder: No layers of management. You'll work side-by-side and have a direct line to technical decisions and company direction.

Path to leadership: This role is explicitly designed for someone who wants to grow into management. You'll help build out a team of 4+ engineers over the next few months and shape the engineering culture from day one.

Direct impact on enterprise AI security: You'll build the infrastructure that lets regulated industries (defense, banking, insurance) safely deploy agentic AI. The problem is urgent and the market is exploding right now.