CIQ OVERVIEW
CIQ builds the enterprise infrastructure that powers the world's most demanding workloads. From the operating system layer through AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, and cloud-native orchestration, CIQ delivers the speed, security, scalability, and sovereignty that major enterprises, government agencies, and research institutions depend on.
CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and the developer of the RLC Pro family of Enterprise Linux distributions, Fuzzball workload orchestration, Warewulf Pro cluster provisioning, and Ascender Pro automation. Our customers include some of the largest and most technically sophisticated organizations in the world, working across HPC, AI/ML, defense, and regulated industries.
We are a company of builders, operators, and open source practitioners. If you want to do work that matters, at a company that is genuinely changing how enterprise infrastructure gets built and run, we want to talk.
POSITION SUMMARY
As a Sr. Application Engineer, you will serve as a key contributor to the development and expansion of Ascender Pro and other internal application projects. You will take ownership of engineering work across both frontend and backend systems, building and shipping features at a high velocity. This role is approximately 50/50 frontend and backend, with an emphasis on backend proficiency. Additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Design, develop, and maintain application features using Python (backend) and React/TypeScript (frontend).
- Contribute to additional projects built in Go as needed.
- Leverage AI-assisted development tools effectively while maintaining the judgment to validate and correct AI-generated output.
- Collaborate closely with the existing engineering team to ship production-quality code quickly.
- Participate in architecture decisions and help define best practices for the application stack.
- Troubleshoot, debug, and resolve issues across the full stack.
- Support other internal engineering initiatives as bandwidth allows.
NEEDED TO SUCCEED
Successful candidates will have:
- Strong proficiency in Python for backend development.
- Solid hands-on experience with React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and NPM.
- Experience with or willingness to work in Go.
- Demonstrated ability to work at a fast pace and power through high volumes of work.
- Practical experience using AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Copilot) with the critical thinking to know when AI output is valid and when it is not.
- Comfort working across the full stack with an emphasis on backend systems.
- Strong problem-solving skills and a self-directed work ethic.
- A friendly, collaborative, humble, honest, and always striving to be better attitude.
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
- 6-8+ years of professional software development experience.
- Proven track record building and shipping production applications in Python and modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks.
- Experience with Go is a strong plus.
- Familiarity with Ascender, AWX, or Ansible automation platforms is a plus but not required.
- Experience with event-driven architectures, infrastructure automation, or DevOps tooling is a plus.
BENEFITS
Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Flexible paid time off.
Employee stock options.
Remote work; no travel required for most positions.
Skills Required
- Strong proficiency in Python for backend development
- Hands-on experience with React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and NPM
- Experience or willingness to work in Go
- Ability to work at a fast pace and handle high volumes of work
- Practical experience using AI-assisted coding tools
- Full-stack development experience with backend emphasis
- Strong problem-solving skills and self-directed work ethic
- Collaborative, humble, honest, and improvement-oriented attitude
- 6-8+ years of professional software development experience
- Track record building and shipping production applications in Python and modern JavaScript or TypeScript frameworks
- Experience with Go
- Familiarity with Ascender, AWX, or Ansible automation platforms
- Experience with event-driven architectures, infrastructure automation, or DevOps tooling
What We Do
Empowering People To Do What They Do Great! At CIQ, we are here to help our customers and communities do amazing things! We are your escalation or development team. We are your infrastructure. We are your cloud. We are the people that will have your back, so you can do what you do great. Our Values Empowering Innovating software infrastructure solutions for extreme performance and scale including service models designed to meet the needs of your organization. Improving Our passion is to always do better. Always provide more value. Always drive intelligent innovation. Always provide what the customer & community needs. Growing CIQ believes in constant and never-ending growth. We are growing fast and looking for like-minded people with an unwavering passion for always doing better for ourselves and others. What do you get when you cross High Performance Computing with Enterprise, Cloud, and Hyper-scale? The Answer is CIQ. CIQ is composed of technology founders, innovators, engineers, some of the leading creators in the industry, and we all share the same vision: to help companies, teams, and individuals do amazing things. Open Source When we decide to open source a project, it is because we believe it would be best for the project and community. But open source is not a marketing gimmick nor a sales tool, and it should never be at the mercy of a corporate agenda. This is why we’ve given our open source initiatives properly to the community, and we strive to set the precedent such that other companies would do likewise. Always Customers First Our model is simple: We support people, not cores or sockets. People. Follow us on YouTube and Twitter: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQbKq1vIffqRAMUDPfHcU0w https://twitter.com/CtrlIQ?s=20&t=7pQXepSSimeTqytBY52Dhw
