Staff Software Engineer (Backend / Distributed Systems)

Location

San Francisco, CA

On-site role requiring five days per week in the office in San Francisco.

Compensation

$250,000 – $300,000 Base + Competitive Equity

Visa

Open to visa transfers, including H-1B transfers and OPT. No additional visa sponsorship details provided.

Company Stage

Seed / Early-Stage Technology Company

Industry

Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, Identity Security, SaaS, Cloud Security, Enterprise Software, AI/ML, Identity Threat Detection

About the Company

Our client is building an AI-powered cybersecurity platform focused on protecting businesses from account compromise and identity-based cyberattacks.

The company's platform helps detect compromised accounts in real time, identify suspicious user behavior, and automatically respond to threats before they can cause significant business damage.

The product is purpose-built for organizations managing Microsoft 365 environments and provides automated identity threat detection and response capabilities for managed service providers and their customers.

The company has achieved strong early product-market fit and is scaling rapidly, protecting more than 1.6 million users across thousands of businesses.

The engineering organization is intentionally small and high-caliber, creating an environment where engineers have significant ownership over core infrastructure and product systems.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll work directly with the founding team to design and scale the backend and distributed systems powering the company's real-time detection platform.

This is a high-ownership role where you'll be expected to build production systems, establish engineering patterns, solve difficult scaling problems, and raise the technical bar across the organization.

The ideal candidate combines strong backend and distributed systems expertise with experience building production software at scale, strong technical judgment, and the ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving startup environment.

What You'll Do

• Design and build backend systems responsible for detecting account compromise in real time
• Build systems spanning signal ingestion, behavioral analysis, and AI-powered decisioning
• Architect scalable distributed systems capable of supporting significant growth
• Design infrastructure to support 10–100x scale growth over the next several months
• Build and ship ML- and AI-integrated systems into production
• Develop reliable backend services supporting real-time security detection
• Design high-throughput systems for processing security and behavioral signals
• Build systems that analyze large volumes of identity and security data
• Improve reliability, scalability, performance, and maintainability across backend systems
• Establish engineering patterns and technical standards across the team
• Raise the technical bar through architecture, code reviews, and engineering practices
• Work directly with founders on the core detection platform
• Make architecture decisions that directly influence the company's technical direction
• Own critical infrastructure from design through production deployment
• Solve complex distributed systems and backend engineering problems
• Develop APIs and services supporting security detection workflows
• Integrate AI/ML capabilities into production backend systems
• Build reliable infrastructure for real-time decision-making
• Work on systems requiring high availability and low-latency processing
• Identify bottlenecks and optimize system performance
• Design systems that can scale with rapidly increasing customer and user volume
• Collaborate closely with product and engineering teams
• Help establish development and operational best practices
• Mentor engineers and contribute to the technical growth of the organization
• Operate with significant autonomy in a rapidly growing startup
• Help evolve the platform as the company scales
• Balance engineering quality, speed, reliability, and product requirements
• Contribute to zero-to-one technical initiatives
• Take ownership of ambiguous and technically challenging engineering problems

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience Requirements

• 5–8 years of backend or distributed systems engineering experience
• Strong backend software engineering background
• Experience designing and building distributed systems
• Experience building production systems at meaningful scale
• Experience owning critical infrastructure or backend systems end-to-end
• Experience working in fast-moving startup environments preferred
• Experience working on high-growth technology products preferred
• Experience shipping production AI/ML-integrated systems preferred
• Experience working on security, identity, infrastructure, or data-intensive systems preferred
• Experience working on real-time systems preferred
• Experience solving complex technical and scaling challenges
• Strong software engineering fundamentals
• Strong system design capabilities
• Experience making architecture decisions independently
• Experience working closely with founders or senior technical leadership
• Ability to operate with significant autonomy
• Demonstrated ability to raise engineering quality and technical standards
• Experience working on zero-to-one products or infrastructure
• Experience mentoring or technically guiding other engineers

Technical Requirements

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals
• Strong distributed systems expertise
• Strong system design skills
• Experience designing scalable backend architectures
• Experience building high-throughput systems
• Experience with real-time data processing
• Strong understanding of APIs and backend services
• Strong understanding of data modeling and storage systems
• Experience designing reliable and fault-tolerant systems
• Experience optimizing backend performance
• Experience working with production cloud infrastructure
• Strong understanding of scalability and system reliability
• Experience with AI/ML-integrated backend systems preferred
• Experience building production ML/AI systems preferred
• Strong understanding of software architecture and technical tradeoffs
• Strong debugging and technical problem-solving ability
• Experience working with observability and production monitoring
• Experience designing systems for high availability
• Ability to reason about latency, throughput, reliability, and scale
• Ability to build maintainable and production-grade software
• Experience working with modern backend technologies
• Familiarity with Node.js and TypeScript
• Familiarity with Python
• Experience working with data-intensive applications
• Experience with security or identity systems preferred
• Ability to evaluate and improve technical architecture
• Strong code review and engineering quality instincts

Education

• Bachelor's degree preferred
• Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical discipline preferred
• Strong technical academic background is a plus
• Equivalent professional engineering experience may compensate for academic pedigree
• Strong technical achievements or demonstrated engineering excellence are highly valued

Soft Skills

• Strong technical ownership
• High autonomy
• Strong engineering judgment
• Excellent problem-solving ability
• High attention to technical quality
• Strong communication skills
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly
• Comfortable working directly with founders
• Strong cross-functional collaboration
• Low-ego and feedback-oriented
• Comfortable giving and receiving direct feedback
• Strong mentoring instincts
• Ability to raise the technical bar across a team
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity
• Comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
• Strong sense of accountability
• Bias toward action
• High execution ability
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment
• Ability to balance speed with reliability and engineering quality
• Strong product awareness
• Ability to connect technical decisions to business impact
• Comfortable working in a high-output environment
• Willingness to work from the San Francisco office five days per week
• Excited by cybersecurity and identity security problems
• Motivated by technically challenging infrastructure problems

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $250,000 – $300,000
• Competitive equity package
• Opportunity to build infrastructure protecting millions of users
• High technical ownership and autonomy
• Direct access to founders and senior technical leadership
• Opportunity to shape the company's core detection platform
• Exposure to AI-powered cybersecurity systems
• Opportunity to solve complex distributed systems problems
• Work on real-time security detection infrastructure
• Opportunity to influence engineering standards and architecture
• High-growth early-stage startup environment
• Opportunity to work on zero-to-one infrastructure
• Visa transfer support, including H-1B transfers and OPT
• Collaborative, feedback-first engineering culture
• Significant opportunity for technical impact and career growth

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join a rapidly growing cybersecurity company building AI-powered systems that protect businesses from real-time identity threats and account compromise.

You'll work on the core infrastructure behind a platform already operating at significant scale, solving difficult backend and distributed systems problems involving real-time detection, behavioral analysis, and AI-powered decisioning.

The engineering team is small and highly technical, which means you'll have significant ownership over architecture and infrastructure rather than working within a narrow area of a large organization.

You'll work directly with the founding team and have the opportunity to establish engineering patterns, raise technical standards, and influence the technical direction of the company's core platform.

The role is particularly well suited for an engineer who enjoys high-scale backend systems, distributed systems, real-time infrastructure, and AI-integrated products.

If you enjoy owning complex systems, solving difficult scaling problems, working closely with founders, and building critical infrastructure from the ground up, this role offers exceptional technical scope and impact.