Senior Software Engineer

Alterion; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Meaningful equity

Opportunity to shape a new category

Job summary

Alterion is seeking a Senior Software Engineer in San Francisco to design and build core backend and distributed systems. This hands-on role involves technical ownership without people management, directly collaborating with founders on architecture. The ideal candidate should have 5–8 years of experience with backend systems, proficiency in languages such as Rust or Python, and a strong understanding of cloud-native services. Competitive compensation and meaningful equity are offered.

Qualifications

• 5–8 years of experience building and operating backend or distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages.
• Experience designing and operating cloud-native services.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement backend systems supporting policy enforcement and observability.
• Build secure, scalable APIs and services.
• Own backend services from design through production deployment.

Skills

Backend languages proficiency (Rust, TypeScript, Python, Go)

Experience with cloud-native services (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Distributed systems fundamentals

API design experience

Job description

About Alterion

Alterion is building the control plane for the agentic enterprise – enabling organizations to safely deploy, monitor, and scale autonomous AI agents with full visibility and governance. Our platform unifies semantic observability, dynamic policy enforcement, and distributed monitoring to ensure agent ecosystems remain trustworthy, compliant, and efficient at scale.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and own core backend and distributed systems that power Alterion’s platform. This is a hands‑on role for a senior systems engineer who enjoys building durable infrastructure, making principled design tradeoffs, and mentoring other engineers.

You will work closely with the founders on system architecture and technical direction, while remaining directly accountable for production code. This is not a people‑management role; technical ownership and execution are core expectations.

What You’ll Work On

• Design and implement backend and distributed systems supporting identity, policy enforcement, observability, and agent lifecycle management
• Build secure, scalable APIs and services that operate reliably in multi‑tenant, cloud‑native environments
• Make and document system design tradeoffs across consistency, performance, availability, and operational complexity
• Own backend services end to end, from initial design through production deployment, monitoring, and iteration
• Establish backend engineering standards for correctness, testing, observability, and long‑term maintainability
• Lead design reviews and mentor engineers through code reviews and technical guidance
• Collaborate closely with security, AI, and product partners to translate platform requirements into robust system designs

Required Qualifications

• 5–8 years of experience building and operating backend or distributed systems in production environments
• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Rust, TypeScript, Python, or Go
• Experience designing and operating cloud‑native services on AWS, GCP, or Azure
• Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including scalability, fault tolerance, data consistency, and observability
• Experience designing APIs and service boundaries for complex or evolving systems
• Demonstrated ownership of critical systems with responsibility for reliability, performance, and long‑term health
• Experience mentoring other engineers or serving as a technical lead on backend or platform projects
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, early‑stage environments and helping shape system direction

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with event‑driven architectures, message queues, or streaming systems
• Familiarity with identity, authentication, authorization, or policy‑based systems
• Exposure to security‑sensitive, compliance‑oriented, or multi‑tenant platforms
• Experience operating systems at meaningful scale (high request volume, large datasets, or multi‑region deployments)
• Strong production observability practices across metrics, logs, and traces
• Prior experience at an early‑stage startup or on foundational infrastructure teams
• Exposure to AI‑adjacent systems or data pipelines (nice to have, not required)

Why Alterion

• Build foundational infrastructure for the next generation of AI systems
• Work directly with the founders on architecture and long‑term technical direction
• Own meaningful, high‑impact systems from day one
• Join a small, senior team that values depth, judgment, and quality
• Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the opportunity to shape a new category