SSH & Remote Development Engineer

About the team

The IntelliJ Platform DevEnv team is a platform team focused on heterogeneous development environments. We build APIs that let JetBrains IDEs work with code in Docker containers, WSL distributions, and on remote SSH hosts.

We are currently looking for an SSH & Remote Development Engineer. If selected for the position, your main focus will be on SSH support – making IDEs work seamlessly over SSH connections to remote hosts.

Your work in this role will focus on the following three key areas:

1. OpenSSH integration – making our products work seamlessly over SSH connections.
2. EEL API development – our experimental platform API for working with remote execution environments (Docker, WSL, SSH, etc.).
3. IJent – a lightweight Rust agent that runs on remote hosts and handles file system operations, process execution, and terminal sessions.

In addition to the above, this role also involves designing new APIs, conducting extensive optimization work (including network protocols, caching, and file transfers), and solving challenging problems at the intersection of networking, distributed systems, and IDE infrastructure.

What you'll work on:

OpenSSH Integration:

• Reusing OpenSSH as a transport layer for remote operations
• Optimizing file transfers over high-latency connections
• Debugging connection issues, timeouts, and reconnections

EEL API:

• Implementing SSH support for EEL
• Optimizing performance for slow connections
• Handling platform differences (Linux, macOS, and Windows on the remote side)
• Working on file system operations, process execution, and path handling

IJent Agent (Rust):

• Extending IJent with new features
• Optimizing performance (file watching and bulk operations)
• Fixing IntelliJ platform-specific issues

Technologies you’ll be using:

• Java/Kotlin – main codebase, EEL API
• Rust – IJent agent
• gRPC – IDE ↔ agent communication

We’ll be happy to have you on our team if you:

• Have strong Java or Kotlin experience
• Possess a solid understanding of network protocols
• Are comfortable with low-level debugging (network, operating systems)

We’ll be especially thrilled if you:

• Have IntelliJ plugin development experience
• Can read and write basic Rust (or are willing to learn)
• Have a systems programming background in Linux or Windows