Software Engineer - Platform (Senior/Staff)

Superserve (YC F26); San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 165,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Superserve (YC F26) in San Francisco / Remote is seeking a Software Engineer, Platform (Senior/Staff) to scale our runtime infrastructure and own the platform end-to-end from low‑level runtime design to production reliability.

You’ll design an agent runtime, enforce security for untrusted code, and develop scheduling/orchestration systems with Kubernetes‑level scope without copying Kubernetes, across regions and bare metal.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Strong systems background including concurrency, isolation, networking, and performance.
• Proficient in Go and/or Rust or willingness to learn quickly.
• Deep intuition for security and reliability, beyond feature work.
• Ability to reason about failures and system behavior under load.
• Have taken systems from 0→1 or 1→scale.
• Comfortable making high-stakes architectural decisions with incomplete information.

Responsibilities

• Design and build our agent runtime infrastructure (Firecracker, Rust, Go).
• Define and enforce security boundaries for running untrusted code.
• Architect and implement scheduling/orchestration systems (Kubernetes-level problems, without blindly copying Kubernetes).
• Implement a global scale distributed systems architecture spanning across regions and bare metal server providers.
• Own performance, isolation, and reliability at scale.
• Set technical direction and raise the bar for engineering across the company.

Skills

Distributed systems

Security & reliability

Go and/or Rust

Architectural decision-making

Scalability & performance

Tools

Kubernetes

Firecracker

Rust

Go

Containers

Job description

Software Engineer, Platform (Senior/Staff)

San Francisco / Remote

At Superserve, our mission is to give builders the foundation to run intelligent software in production.

We’re building agent sandboxes—runtime infrastructure that is fast, durable, and secure by default. This is the layer that lets AI systems actually run in the real world.

We’re a small, globally distributed team based in San Francisco, backed by forward-thinking investors.

The Role

We’re looking for a platform engineer to scale the architecture and evolution of our core runtime.

This is not a typical backend role. You’ll define how untrusted AI agents execute safely, how systems scale under load, and how we meet security and compliance standards from first principles.

You’ll work directly with the founder and own the platform end-to-end: from low-level runtime design to distributed scheduling to production reliability.

What You’ll Own

• Design and build our agent runtime infrastructure (Firecracker, Rust, Go)
• Define and enforce security boundaries for running untrusted code
• Architect and implement scheduling and orchestration systems (Kubernetes-level problems, without blindly copying Kubernetes)
• Implement a global scale distributed systems architecture spanning across regions and bare metal server providers.
• Own performance, isolation, and reliability at scale
• Set technical direction and raise the bar for engineering across the company

What We’re Looking For

• You’ve built and operated distributed systems or infrastructure at scale
• Strong systems background (concurrency, isolation, networking, performance)
• Experience with Go and/or Rust (or willingness to go deep quickly)
• Deep intuition for security and reliability, not just features
• You care about how things fail, not just how they work
• You’ve taken systems from 0 → 1 or 1 → scale
• You’re comfortable making high-stakes architectural decisions with incomplete information

Bonus

• Experience with Firecracker, microVMs, containers, or sandboxing
• Experience with Kubernetes or building schedulers
• Deep expertise in reducing I/O latency and maximizing throughput for data-intensive applications

Why This Role Matters

AI agents are unreliable, unsafe, and hard to run in production today.

We’re fixing that.

This role is about building the foundation that makes intelligent systems actually usable in real-world environments—fast, secure, and dependable.

If we get this right, a whole new category of software becomes possible.

Working With Us

• Small, high-ownership team
• Work directly with the founder
• Real technical authority and decision-making power
• No layers, no committees—just building

Bar for This Role

This is a high-ownership, high-agency role.

We’re looking for someone who wants to own a critical layer of the stack, not just contribute to it.

California Pay Range

$165,000 - $230,000 USD