Software Engineer III/Senior, Agent

ngrokinc; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work schedule (SF)

Health coverage (medical)

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Mental health support

401(k) with match

Home office stipend

Co-working stipend

Professional development budget

Company offsites

Job summary

ngrok is seeking a senior software engineer to join an Agent team responsible for the client software exposing developer systems to the public internet. You will extend a fast, reliable agent with SDKs and embeddable runtimes while improving diagnostics and observability across diverse platforms.

The role emphasizes latency, correctness, and security under flaky networks and hostile production conditions, with a strong focus on developer experience and clear technical tradeoffs.

Qualifications

• Experience building systems-level software that operates reliably under pressure.
• Strong debugging of distributed or networking-related issues.
• Clear written and verbal communication about technical tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Build on a recently redesigned agent architecture to ship new networking and remote management capabilities.
• Design for latency, throughput, and correctness under partitions and transient failures.
• Develop and maintain SDKs and embeddable agent components used by other systems.
• Improve diagnostics, logging, and metrics to explain production behavior with data.
• Ensure consistent behavior across laptops, servers, CI, containers, and diverse platforms.
• Collaborate with product, platform, and support teams to investigate failures.

Skills

Go

Rust

C/C++

Java

Tools

SDKs

Embeddable runtimes

Job description

Role overview

A senior-level software engineer is needed to join an Agent team responsible for the client software that exposes developer systems to the public internet. The role focuses on extending a recently redesigned agent that must remain fast, predictable, and correct under flaky networks, expired certificates, overloaded machines, and hostile production conditions. The work combines systems programming, SDK development, and observability to make a foundational developer tool feel invisible when it works.

Responsibilities

• Build on a recently redesigned agent architecture to ship new networking, integration, and remote management capabilities
• Design for latency, throughput, and correctness under partitions, transient failures, misconfiguration, and resource-constrained environments
• Develop and maintain SDKs and embeddable agent components that other systems and products depend on
• Improve diagnostics, logging, and metrics so production behavior can be explained with data rather than guesswork
• Ensure consistent behavior across developer laptops, servers, CI systems, containers, and other diverse platforms
• Partner with product, platform, and support teams to investigate failures and reduce confusion for customers

Requirements

• Experience building systems-level software that operates reliably under pressure
• Proficiency in Go, Rust, C/C++, or Java, with Go experience considered a plus
• Comfort debugging complex, distributed, or networking-related issues
• Strong reasoning about reliability, security, and performance tradeoffs
• Care for developer experience alongside correctness
• Clear written and verbal communication about technical tradeoffs

Nice to have

• Background in networking, proxies, or agent-style software
• Experience with SDKs or embeddable runtimes
• Familiarity with observability tooling
• Contributions to widely used open-source systems

Benefits and work setup

• Hybrid schedule with two in-office days per week in San Francisco
• US-based candidates only; visa sponsorship is not available for this role
• Tiered salary bands by location and level (senior vs. level III), combined with equity
• Full medical, dental, and vision premiums covered for employees, partial dependent coverage, and mental health support
• 401(k) with employer match, flexible vacation policy, parental leave, professional development budget, home office stipend, and co-working stipend
• Twice-yearly company offsites and free lunches on in-office days