Backend Engineer (Member of Technical Staff)

Cogent Security

San Francisco (CA)

On-site

USD 100,000 - 300,000

Full time

14 days+

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Job summary

A cybersecurity technology firm in San Francisco seeks a talented Backend Engineer to develop backend services for autonomous AI systems. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in backend programming, distributed systems, and API design. This full-time role offers competitive compensation based on skills and experience, with a salary range of $100,000 to $300,000 annually.

Qualifications

5+ years of professional experience as hands-on engineer and technical leader.
Expertise in architecting, developing, and scaling backend systems.
Strong knowledge of concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization.

Responsibilities

Design and implement key backend and integration platform subsystems.
Prepare Cogent for future growth in headcount, customers, and data.
Help create a robust engineering culture at Cogent.

Skills

Backend programming languages (Python, Go)

API design and implementation

Distributed systems

Microservices

Containerization technologies (Kubernetes, Docker)

Orchestration and deployment technologies

Job description

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About Cogent Security

Cogent Security is on a mission to stop breaches and prevent cybercrime by innovating at the frontier of generative AI systems. We are building the world’s first AI cyber taskforce, composed of AI agents capable of human-caliber reasoning and execution of cybersecurity tasks, that autonomously protects organizations from emerging threats. The early adopters of our technology include some of the world’s most important institutions, spanning public companies, elite universities, and Fortune 500 corporations across industries.

Cogent was founded by a seasoned team of former engineering and product leaders who bring decades of experience across cybersecurity and technology. The early team is fully in-person in San Francisco and New York and consists of top software engineering and machine learning talent from leading companies such as Abnormal Security, Coinbase, Microsoft, Tesla, Stripe and more. We recently raised a large Seed round from top investors and angels across AI, cybersecurity and enterprise software.

We are constantly pushing ourselves to ACHIEVe

Ambition for Excellence
- We work backwards from the way things should be and constantly measure our progress against it
Customer Centricity
- We obsess over the problems our customers face and relentlessly innovate to find the best solutions
Intellectual Honesty
- We embrace hard conversations and actively seek the truth
Intentionality
- We exhibit good judgment and are thoughtful about tradeoffs
Extreme Ownership
- We take pride in our work and never say the words “not my problem”
Velocity / Bias for Action
- We don’t leave for tomorrow what can be done today

About The Role

As we work with our first design partners, Cogent is building a suite of backend services and integrations that will power our autonomous AI workers. We are looking for talented, ambitious Backend Senior and Staff Engineers who are excited to build in the Applied AI space.

What You’ll Do & Achieve

Design and implement key backend, integration platform subsystems
- Understand business goals, product and technology strategies and customer requirements and implement supporting backend and integration platform subsystems to achieve them
- Adapt and evolve systems and plans to implement newly identified design partner and customer requirements
- Adapt and evolve systems to implement non‑functional requirements (compliance, security, enterprise integration etc.)
Laying down infrastructure foundations for growth and scalability
- Prepare Cogent for future headcount, customer, and data growth by working with a team to design and build an infrastructure that will scale and that achieves requirements in the areas of product capabilities, non‑functional needs (reliability, security, disaster recovery etc.).
Help create a robust engineering culture at Cogent
- Onboard, support and uplevel future team members
- Participate in, provide feedback on, and iterate interview process as we scale the team up
- Actively contribute to Engineering Excellence, Operational Excellence and Recruiting initiatives

What You’ll Bring

5+ years of professional experience as a hands‑on engineer and technical leader, overseeing and contributing to multiple backend systems and infrastructure projects
Expertise in architecting, developing, and scaling backend systems, including both stateless and stateful architectures, to support high‑performance, enterprise‑level applications
Proven experience with distributed systems, microservices, and serverless architectures, ensuring robustness, scalability, and fault tolerance
Strong knowledge of backend programming languages such as Python, Go or similar, with a deep understanding of concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization
Experience with API design and implementation (RESTful and/or gRPC), integrating with frontend systems, data platforms, and third‑party services
Solid experience with containerization, orchestration, and deployment technologies like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines in multi‑cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Compensation (California Based Applicants)

The standard base salary range for this position is $100,000 – $300,000 annually. Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits.

EEO Statement

We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse company. We do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race.

Job Details