Staff Software Engineer, Backend Services

Hi, we're The Browser Company 👋 and we're building a better way to use the internet.

Browsers are unique in that they are one of the only pieces of software that you share with your parents as well as your kids. Which makes sense, they're our doorway to the most important things — through them we socialize with loved ones, work on our passion projects, and explore our curiosities. But on their own, they don’t actually do a whole lot, they’re kind of just there. They don’t help us organize our messy lives or make it easier to compose our ideas. We believe that the browser could do so much more — it can empower and support the amazing things we do on the internet. That’s why we’re building one: a browser that can help us grow, create, and stay curious.

To accomplish this lofty task, we’re building a diverse team of people from different backgrounds and experiences. This isn’t optional, it’s crucial to our mission, as we need a wide range of perspectives to challenge our assumptions and shape our browser through a bold, creative lens. With that in mind, we especially encourage women, people of color, and others from historically marginalized groups to apply.

As The Browser Company’s first Backend Services Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in driving the architecture and scaling of our backend systems. This isn't just about solving day-to-day challenges; it’s about owning the big picture—architecting systems that power our product for millions of users and shaping the strategic direction for new product services. We’re building our next product, one that will maximize the potential of an AI Assistant in the browser layer. Your work will be critical to building and scaling the backend services that power these features for millions of Members.

Overall you will...

• Lead the design, development, and optimization of scalable, robust backend systems that are critical to Arc’s success.

• Own large-scale, high-impact technical projects that cut across multiple teams and directly influence our product and company strategy.

• Serve as a technical leader and mentor, providing guidance and oversight to engineering teams on complex technical issues, architectural decisions, and best practices.

• Influence and contribute to critical architectural decisions, ensuring we’re always building with the future in mind.

• Drive cross-functional collaboration with product, security, and engineering teams to define technical vision and ensure the backend infrastructure evolves to support Arc’s growth and product innovation.

Examples of projects you might lead:

• Design application backends, APIs, protocols, data structures, and assess system design

• Design and implement backend systems to support core product needs such as AI inference (eg. via self-hosting LLMs), proxying to other services, and data syncing across devices.

• Support multiple clouds and LLM providers for improved availability

• Design highly performant, resilient, and scalable systems that provide a high quality experience for users on desktop and mobile platforms worldwide.

• Implement effective observability and monitoring for our backend services

• Identify opportunities to iterate on our infrastructure to improve efficiency, developer productivity, or reduce costs

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in a technical leadership role, 6+ years of experience working on large-scale backend systems.

• Demonstrated ability to lead high-impact, cross-team projects and influence architectural decisions at a company-wide level.

• A strategic mindset, with the ability to see the bigger picture and align technical decisions with business goals.

• Experience working with GCP, AWS, or Azure, with significant expertise in at least one of these, including proficiency in infrastructure-as-code practices and tools (e.g., Terraform).

• Experience setting up monitoring and observability for cloud infrastructure, e.g. with datadog, and using these tools to deliver improvements.

• Proficiency in a programming language like TypeScript, Go, Java, Swift, etc.

• You're passionate about building tools and systems that make other engineers more productive and strive to make them elegant and maintainable.

• We’re primarily focused on hiring in North American time zones and require that folks have 4+ hours of overlap time with team members in Eastern Time Zone.

💰 With our flexible compensation model, employees have the ability to choose the cash-to-equity ratio that best suits their individual needs. Every offer we extend includes three options: a salary-optimized offer, an equity-optimized offer, and a balanced offer.

The annual salary range for this role is $225,000-275,000 USD. The actual salary range offered will vary based on experience level and interview performance.

🧘🏻‍♀️ In addition to a competitive salary and equity package, we provide every employee with the following benefits:

• comprehensive benefits package with employee medical, dental, and vision - we cover 100% of premiums for employees, and up to 95% for dependents

• 401k plan

• flexible vacation policy - on average, our team members take between 15-20 vacation days plus federal holidays (holidays vary by location)

• remote-friendly working environment - our core working hours are 11 AM-2 PM Eastern Time, Monday-Friday

• 12 weeks of paid parental leave

• $1,500 USD home office stipend

• Employees based in the US also receive additional services like free annual memberships to One Medical (where available), Talkspace, Teladoc, and HealthAdvocate

The Browser Company is a well-funded, ambitious startup of about 85 people (and growing!) who are passionate about building great products. We are a remote-first, distributed team, with the option to work in office in New York. We strongly support diversity and encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. 

🚙 To read more about what we value as a company, check out Notes on Roadtrips on our blog.