Distributed Systems Software Engineer, GovCloud - Senior/Lead

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Leadout Capital is seeking a Distributed Systems Software Engineer for GovCloud (Senior/Lead) to design and maintain large-scale distributed platforms used by government customers. The role emphasizes AI-first engineering, precision prompts, and production-grade solutions across multi data centers.

You will own backend services in Java/Golang/Python/Ruby, implement IaC with Terraform, and operate in Kubernetes environments, ensuring security and reliability at scale.

Qualifications

• A related technical degree is required.
• 5+ years backend software development experience.
• Proficient programming in Java, Golang, Python, or Ruby.
• Experience owning and operating multiple instances of a critical service.
• Familiarity with Agile development and Test Driven Development.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, logging, and reporting apps.
• Experience with distributed DBs and relational DBs like Postgres is a plus.
• Demonstrated AI-first approach to engineering and using AI tools in workflows.

Responsibilities

• Deliver cloud infrastructure automation tools, frameworks, workflows, and validation platforms.
• Design, develop, debug, and operate resilient distributed systems across data centers.
• Build production-grade software using modern engineering practices with AI integration.
• Use and contribute to open source tech (Spinnaker, Zookeeper).
• Develop Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform.
• Write microservices on Kubernetes, Docker, Mesos.
• Ensure AI agents integrate into human workflows to improve efficiency.
• Contribute to a shared system context documenting designs, constraints, and standards.
• Critically evaluate code for correctness, quality, security, and performance.
• Participate in on-call rotation to keep services operational.

Skills

Backend software dev

Java/Golang/Python/Ruby

Agile / TDD

AI-first engineering

On-call experience

Education

Related technical degree

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

Spinnaker

Zookeeper

OpenAI/GClaude/Copilot

Job description

Must be a U.S. Citizen operating on U.S. Soil with ability to meet customer and government screening standards applicable to this role, including a Criminal Justice Information Services screening with fingerprint scan. Due to the citizenship requirement for this role, which supports U.S. federal, state, and/or local government customers, citizenship will be verified through two of the following REAL ID Act documents: U.S. Passport, Passport Card, REAL Driver's License, Global Entry Card, U.S. Government CAC/PIV.

Distributed Systems Software Engineer - GovCloud (Senior/Lead)

Our Public Cloud engineering teams are responsible for innovating and maintaining a large scale distributed systems engineering platform that ships hundreds of features to production for tens of millions of users across all industries every day. Our users count on our platform to be highly reliable, lightning fast, supremely secure, and to preserve all of their customizations and integrations every time we ship. You will need deep experience with concurrency, large scale systems, proficiency with solving real-world data management challenges, a strong understanding of how to craft solutions that are highly available, and a proven ability to design, develop, and optimize the core back-end systems. This role requires advanced prompt engineering skills — the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.
Your Impact:

• Deliver cloud infrastructure automation tools, frameworks, workflows, and validation platforms on our public cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba

• Designing, developing, debugging, and operating resilient distributed systems that run across thousands of compute nodes in multiple data centers

• Build and ship high-quality, production-grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow by pushing the boundaries of AI development tools (Cursor, Windsurf, Claude, OpenAI API) to deliver secure, optimized, and high-quality code.

• Using and contributing to open source technology (Spinnaker, Zookeeper, etc.)

• Developing Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform

• Writing microservices on containerization frameworks such as Kubernetes, Docker, Mesos

• Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate seamlessly into human workflows, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.

• Contribute to building and maintaining the shared system context, an explicit repository of system designs, constraints, and standards that enables AI to operate accurately and reliably.

• Critically evaluate code (Human or AI-generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance

• Resolving complex technical issues and drive innovations that improve system availability, resilience, and performance

• Eat, sleep, and breathe services. You have experience balancing live-site management, feature delivery, and retirement of technical debt

• Participate in the team’s on-call rotation to address complex problems in real-time and keep services operational and highly available

Required Skills:

• A related technical degree required

• 5+ years backend software development experience

• Deep knowledge of programming in Java, Golang, Python, or Ruby

• Experience owning and operating multiple instances of a critical service

• Experience with Agile development methodology and Test Driven Development

• Experience with critical infrastructure services including, monitoring, alerting, logging, and reporting applications

• Experience with distributed database system and relational databases like postgres is a plus.

• A demonstrated, genuine AI-first approach to engineering. Using AI to move faster, build fluency across the stack, and contribute well beyond your core specialty.

• Experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, etc.) in development workflows

• Advanced prompt engineering skills and the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.

Benefits & Perks
Check out our benefits site which explains our various benefits, including wellbeing reimbursement, generous parental leave, adoption assistance, fertility benefits, and more.
Salesforce Information
Check out our Salesforce Engineering Site.