Backend | Distributed Systems Engineer

Restate; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Restate is building a durable execution runtime and is seeking a Backend / Distributed Systems Engineer to help evolve its infrastructure. You will design and implement core backend and distributed components, focusing on durable execution, state management, storage, messaging, concurrency, fault tolerance, and recovery.

You will work hands-on to design, build, test, and improve software, partnering with engineers using Restate in production.

Qualifications

• Strong backend engineering experience building production systems.
• Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or systems with concurrency, state, messaging, and failure handling.
• Proficiency in at least one backend language; Rust, Go, Java, or C++ are highly relevant.
• Experience designing, building, and operating production software at scale.
• Solid understanding of software reliability, performance, and system design.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core backend and distributed systems components.
• Build systems that are low-latency, highly reliable, and scalable.
• Improve observability, testing, failure handling, and operational reliability.
• Work across the boundary between application code and infrastructure when needed.
• Collaborate with engineers using Restate to translate production feedback into product improvements.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Rust/Go/Java/C++

Production systems

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud infrastructure

Job description

Software is changing.

Applications are becoming increasingly long-running, stateful, autonomous, and distributed. As systems grow more complex, engineers spend more and more time solving the same infrastructure problems: retries, failures, orchestration, state management, communication, and recovery.

We don't think every engineering team should have to build those capabilities themselves.

At Restate, we're building durable execution as a foundational infrastructure primitive—making reliability a default property of modern applications instead of an engineering burden.

We're looking for a Backend / Distributed Systems Engineer to help us build and evolve that infrastructure.

You’ll work on the core systems that make Restate fast, reliable, and scalable—from distributed execution and state management to storage, messaging, and production infrastructure. You’ll have the opportunity to work closely with other engineers building real production systems, giving you a direct view into how the systems you build are used and where they can be improved.

If you enjoy distributed systems, backend infrastructure, and solving difficult engineering problems, we’d love to talk.

About Restate

Restate (https://restate.dev/) is a lightweight runtime that turns services, workflows, and AI applications into durable processes.

Developers adopt Restate so they can focus on business logic while Restate handles the challenges of building resilient, scalable applications—retries, state, communication, orchestration, and recovery.

Restate itself is built as a low‑latency durable execution runtime in Rust, designed for production scale with its own optimized storage engine. Developers can build Restate applications using TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, Rust, or Ruby.

Today, Restate powers production workloads at Fortune 500 companies—including Tier 1 financial institutions as well as fast‑growing infrastructure and AI companies building mission‑critical systems.

Our team includes the creators of Apache Flink and engineers who built large‑scale distributed systems at Meta. We care deeply about building infrastructure developers genuinely enjoy using, with thoughtful engineering and elegant systems.

The Role

As a Backend / Distributed Systems Engineer, you’ll work across the systems that make Restate a reliable foundation for modern applications.

You’ll design and build backend infrastructure, distributed systems, and developer‑facing capabilities that need to operate reliably at production scale. You’ll work on problems involving distributed execution, state, storage, messaging, concurrency, fault tolerance, and recovery.

This is a hands‑on engineering role. You’ll spend the majority of your time designing, building, testing, and improving software.

You’ll also have opportunities to work directly with engineers using Restate in production. Rather than sitting behind a product boundary, you’ll see firsthand how teams are building with Restate, help solve challenging technical problems when needed, and bring those insights back into the product.

As one of our early engineers, you’ll have significant influence over both the technology and the engineering practices we build around it.

What You’ll Do

Build distributed systems infrastructure

• Design and implement core backend and distributed systems components
• Work on problems involving durable execution, state management, messaging, storage, concurrency, and fault tolerance
• Build systems that are low‑latency, highly reliable, and capable of operating at significant scale
• Improve the performance, scalability, and resilience of the Restate runtime
• Contribute to the architecture and evolution of Restate's core platform

Build for production

• Design systems that operate reliably in real‑world production environments
• Diagnose and solve complex distributed systems and production issues
• Improve observability, testing, failure handling, and operational reliability
• Work across the boundary between application code and infrastructure when needed

Work closely with engineers using Restate

• Partner with engineering teams building production systems with Restate
• Understand real‑world technical challenges and translate them into product improvements
• Build reference implementations, integrations, and tooling where useful
• Bring feedback from production users directly into engineering and product decisions

Shape the product and engineering culture

• Turn recurring technical challenges into reusable systems, tooling, and documentation
• Contribute to technical discussions, design reviews, and architecture decisions
• Help define engineering practices as the team and product scale

What We're Looking For

We're looking for strong backend engineers who are excited by distributed systems and infrastructure and want to work on hard technical problems.

Must Have:

• Strong backend engineering experience building production systems
• Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or other systems involving concurrency, state, messaging, and failure handling
• Strong experience in at least one backend language; Rust, Go, Java, C++, or similar are particularly relevant
• Experience designing, building, and operating production software at scale
• Strong understanding of software reliability, performance, and system design

Nice to Have:

• Experience with distributed databases, workflow engines, messaging systems, or other infrastructure software
• Experience with Rust or other systems programming languages
• Experience with Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure
• Experience with storage engines, networking, or low‑level systems
• Experience rearchitecting or migrating production systems
• Open‑source contributions or experience building developer‑facing infrastructure

How You Work

• You enjoy solving difficult technical problems and digging deep into how systems work.
• You care about correctness, performance, reliability, and developer experience.
• You communicate technical ideas clearly through design docs, architecture discussions, and code.
• You have high ownership and thrive in an early‑stage environment.
• You naturally look for ways to turn one‑off solutions into reusable systems.
• You're comfortable working directly with other engineers to understand and solve real‑world technical problems.

Why This Role

Most distributed systems engineers spend their careers improving existing infrastructure.

At Restate, you’ll have the opportunity to help define a new infrastructure primitive from the ground up.

You’ll work alongside the creators of Apache Flink and engineers who have built large‑scale distributed systems, tackling some of the fundamental problems behind reliable modern applications.

You’ll have meaningful ownership over the systems you build, influence the architecture as Restate scales, and see your work running in production at companies building mission‑critical applications.

And because we’re still early, you’ll have an unusually direct connection between the engineers building with Restate, the problems they’re encountering, and the software we build to solve them.

If you’re excited about distributed systems, infrastructure, and building something foundational from the ground up, this is a rare opportunity to do that at the beginning of a new category.

Location

• United States — San Francisco Bay Area preferred