About the company
Our client is a software company.
The role
Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Own the design and delivery of core backend and platform systems end to end as one of the first engineers, from architecture through production operation. The work is systems-heavy and spans long-running processing, access control, secure credential handling and the tooling used to run the platform.
What you'll do
- Build a workflow engine for long-running processes with durable state, retries, approvals, replay and audit trails.
- Design identity and authorization for users, services and automated actors, including delegation, scoped sessions and tenant isolation.
- Develop a versioned policy engine that governs which actions are permitted on which resources.
- Own secure storage and use of sensitive customer credentials, including rotation, revocation and limiting the impact of any compromise.
- Define the boundary between non-deterministic model output and deterministic execution through validation, evaluation and release gates.
- Build isolated virtual environments with reproducible state, observability and resource controls.
- Ship the interfaces and APIs used to author, review, debug and operate these systems in production.
Requirements
What we're looking for
- At least 4 years of experience designing and running complex production systems, with the ability to explain failures, recovery and lessons learned.
- Strength in backend and systems architecture, with the range to contribute across frontend, data, infrastructure and product.
- Deep expertise in at least one area such as access management, authorization, distributed workflow engines, application security or enterprise integrations.
- A rigorous approach to system design that accounts for correctness guarantees, security risks, ways things can break and what users actually need.
- Comfort working from ambiguity and moving quickly without compromising correctness, security or operability.
- Ability to work on-site in San Francisco, Monday to Friday, at startup pace.
Bonus points
- Experience building systems for managing permissions, machine identities or sensitive credentials.
- Experience building workflow runtimes, reconciliation systems, sandboxes or evaluation infrastructure.
- Prior experience as a founding-stage engineer with broad ownership of technical direction and customer-facing work.
Benefits
Compensation and benefits
- Base salary: USD 200,000 to 300,000 per year
- Health insurance
- Unlimited paid time off
Location and work model
- San Francisco, CA, United States
- On-site, Monday to Friday
- Full-time
Skills Required
- At least 4 years of experience designing and running complex production systems
- Strong backend and systems architecture experience with ability to contribute across frontend, data, infrastructure, and product
- Deep expertise in at least one area such as access management, authorization, distributed workflow engines, application security, or enterprise integrations
- Strong system design skills covering correctness guarantees, security risks, failure modes, and user needs
- Ability to work effectively with ambiguity while maintaining correctness, security, and operability
- Ability to work on-site in San Francisco Monday through Friday
- Experience building systems for permissions, machine identities, or sensitive credentials
- Experience building workflow runtimes, reconciliation systems, sandboxes, or evaluation infrastructure
- Founding-stage engineering experience with broad technical ownership and customer-facing work
What We Do
Raydar is a talent acquisition and business consulting firm that connects world-class and emerging talent with growing organizations. It supports companies through team development, strategic hiring, and customized growth solutions, helping clients recruit roles such as engineers, product managers, executives, legal counsel, and quantitative traders. Raydar focuses on understanding each organization’s needs, culture, and long-term goals to build high-impact teams.
