Software Engineer, APIs & Context Platform

Joinhorizon; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Home office stipend

Education stipend

Wellness stipend

Healthy lunches provided

Job summary

Glean is seeking a Software Engineer, APIs & Context Platform, to shape the horizontal AI platform powering how employees use AI at work. You will own REST API standards, design new endpoints, and build the API gateway layer, while collaborating across backend services, SDKs, and developer docs.

This role emphasizes developer experience and scalable API surfaces in a fast-moving startup environment. Based in Mountain View, this hybrid role requires 4 days in the office.

Qualifications

• BA/BS in computer science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of industry software engineering experience, with public APIs or developer platforms in production.
• Deep fluency in REST API design principles: versioning, backward compatibility, pagination, error semantics, hypermedia, and OpenAPI/JSON Schema.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve Glean’s REST API standards: versioning strategy, backward-compatibility guarantees, deprecation policy, and OpenAPI tooling.
• Design and ship new API endpoints exposing platform primitives (search, knowledge graph, chat, agent) as stable developer surfaces.
• Build the API gateway layer: routing, authentication (OAuth2, API keys, OIDC), rate limiting, quota management, per-tenant usage metering.
• Define reusable platform primitives on top of horizontal layers (connectors, security/governance, memory, model orchestration) for internal and external use.
• Work across backend services, developer tools, SDKs, and documentation in a fast-growing startup.
• Design, build, and evolve SDKs and client libraries for integration with Glean and agent frameworks.
• Instrument API usage to surface adoption metrics, error patterns, and latency SLOs.
• Champion the external developer perspective and feed feedback into the roadmap.

Skills

REST API design

OpenAPI/JSON Schema

Golang

API development

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Job description

Software Engineer, APIs & Context Platform

Glean is the Work AI platform that helps everyone work smarter with AI. What began as the industry’s most advanced enterprise search has evolved into a full-scale Work AI ecosystem, powering intelligent Search, an AI Assistant, and scalable AI agents on one secure, open platform. With over 100 enterprise SaaS connectors, flexible LLM choice, and robust APIs, Glean gives organizations the infrastructure to govern, scale, and customize AI across their entire business - without vendor lock-in or costly implementation cycles.

At its core, Glean is redefining how enterprises find, use, and act on knowledge. Its Enterprise Graph and Personal Knowledge Graph map the relationships between people, content, and activity, delivering deeply personalized, context-aware responses for every employee. This foundation powers Glean’s agentic capabilities - AI agents that automate real work across teams by accessing the industry’s broadest range of data: enterprise and world, structured and unstructured, historical and real-time. The result: measurable business impact through faster onboarding, hours of productivity gained each week, and smarter, safer decisions at every level.

Recognized by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies (Top 10, 2025), by CNBC’s Disruptor 50, Bloomberg’s AI Startups to Watch (2026), Forbes AI 50, and Gartner’s Tech Innovators in Agentic AI, Glean continues to accelerate its global impact. With customers across 50+ industries and 1,000+ employees in more than 25 countries, we’re helping the world’s largest organizations make every employee AI-fluent, and turning the superintelligent enterprise from concept into reality.

If you’re excited to shape how the world works, you’ll help build systems used daily across Microsoft Teams, Zoom, ServiceNow, Zendesk, GitHub, and many more – deeply embedded where people get things done. You’ll ship agentic capabilities on an open, extensible stack, with the craft and care required for enterprise trust, as we bring Work AI to every employee, in every company.

About the Role:

Glean is building the horizontal AI platform that powers how employees use AI at work – not just in Glean, but across tools like Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, IDEs, and more. We are seeking creative engineers to build this context platform and deliver rich, trustworthy experiences across all of those apps. This team owns the platform experience end-to-end: standards and tooling for REST APIs, SDKs and client libraries, agent SDKs and integrations, MCP servers, custom context such as code and memory, and the infrastructure and docs that make it easy to build on Glean. In a rapidly growing startup, this means working across multiple layers of the stack - backend services, developer tools, SDKs, and docs.

You will:

• Own and evolve Glean’s REST API standards: versioning strategy, backward-compatibility guarantees, deprecation policy, and OpenAPI specification tooling.
• Design and ship new API endpoints that expose Glean’s platform primitives - search, knowledge graph, chat, agent and others - as stable, well‑documented developer surfaces.
• Build the API gateway layer: routing, authentication (OAuth2, API keys, OIDC), rate limiting, quota management, and per-tenant usage metering.
• Define reusable platform primitives on top of Glean’s horizontal layers (connectors, security/governance, knowledge graph, memory, model orchestration) so they can be composed by internal teams and external partners.
• Work across backend services, developer tools, SDKs, and documentation in a fast‑moving startup environment.
• Design, build, and evolve SDKs and client libraries that developers use to integrate with Glean from their own applications and agent frameworks.
• Instrument API usage to surface adoption metrics, error patterns, and latency SLOs
• Champion the external developer perspective internally — bring customer feedback, friction points, and feature requests into the roadmap process.

About you:

• BA/BS in computer science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of industry software engineering experience, with meaningful time spent building and shipping public‑facing APIs or developer platforms in production.
• Deep fluency in REST API design principles: versioning, backward compatibility, pagination, error semantics, hypermedia, and OpenAPI/JSON Schema.
• Proficiency in at least one modern backend language (ideally Golang, or strong interest in learning it); experience with TypeScript, Python, and/or Java is a plus.
• Thrive in a customer-focused, tight-knit, cross-functional environment – being a team player and willing to take on whatever is most impactful for the company is a must.
• A proactive and positive attitude to lead, learn, troubleshoot, and take ownership of both small tasks and large features.

Location:

• This role is hybrid (4 days a week in our Mountain View office)

The standard base salary range for this position is $210,000 - $260,000 annually. Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits.

We offer a comprehensive benefits package including competitive compensation, Medical, Vision, and Dental coverage, generous time-off policy, and the opportunity to contribute to your 401k plan to support your long-term goals. When you join, you’ll receive a home office improvement stipend, as well as an annual education and wellness stipends to support your growth and wellbeing. We foster a vibrant company culture through regular events, and provide healthy lunches daily to keep you fueled and focused.

We are a diverse bunch of people and we want to continue to attract and retain a diverse range of people into our organization. We’re committed to an inclusive and diverse company. We do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race.

#LI-HYBRID

At Glean, AI fluency is core to how we work and we’re committed to ensuring every new hire feels confident integrating AI into their everyday work. As part of the interview process, you’ll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about, design, and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today - prior GLean experience isn’t required.

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