Principal Backend Engineer (Distributed Systems & Control Planes)
Core
Building a distributed security grid (Control Plane) that orchestrates security policies across thousands of nodes in real-time to decouple data security from application security.
Role type
Principal/Staff Backend Engineer (Distributed Systems & Control Planes)
Builds
A central control plane component for a large-scale SaaS platform that enforces security policy at the edge.
Domain
Cybersecurity / Distributed Systems / Cloud Infrastructure
Deliverable
production ML models | product features | infrastructure
Required skills
Go (Golang), Python, gRPC, Protocol Buffers, AWS (EKS, Lambda), Kubernetes, Docker, EventBridge, Kinesis, Kafka, Terraform, SPIFFE/SPIRE, Redis/Memcached, Postgres, DynamoDB, Delta Lake, Parquet
Preferred skills
Azure or GCP, OPA/Rego, Cedar, LLM systems, vector databases, service mesh technologies (Envoy Proxy, WASM, Rust), data classification, lineage, or labeling systems
Technologies
Go, Python, gRPC, Protocol Buffers, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Kafka, Redis, Postgres, DynamoDB, Delta Lake
Responsibilities
Lead architecture and system design for cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS platforms; Design and scale distributed systems, microservices, and high-throughput backend services; Lead infrastructure and platform engineering using orchestration, event-driven pipelines, and streaming systems; Drive performance, caching, and processing strategies for latency sensitive large-scale workloads; Ensure compliance support for NIST – RMF, SOC2, HIPAA, PII/PHI and internal policy frameworks; Partner with data and ML teams to build data lakes, pipelines and model-driven product features; Mentor engineers, influence engineering culture, and guide long-term architectural strategy
Seniority
Principal/Staff, hands-on IC with strategic influence