Staff Backend Engineer - Performance - US

goteleport.com; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Extensive health coverage

Annual expense budget

Rest and recovery policies

Retirement savings plans

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

Teleport is seeking product-focused systems engineers to work on Teleport Core Product. You will tackle performance, scalability, security, and integration challenges across the full product lifecycle, collaborating with customers and teams.

Most code will be Open Source and written in Go. You will design, develop, and ship high-quality features, lead a distributed engineering team, and work directly with customers to diagnose and remediate performance issues.

Qualifications

• Hands-on builder who loves zero-to-one product work.
• Strong experience in Go and distributed systems.
• Leadership experience with engineering teams.
• Linux systems engineering background.
• Open source contributions are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and ship high-quality, scalable features in Teleport Core Product.
• Lead a distributed team of engineers to deliver reliable systems.
• Work with customers to diagnose performance issues and iterate on solutions.
• Write most of the code in Go and collaborate across teams.
• Grow technical expertise and influence Teleport’s product direction.

Skills

Go

Distributed systems

Leadership

Linux

Open source

Tools

Go toolchain

Kubernetes

Prometheus

Job description

About Teleport

Don't wait for the future of infrastructure. Be part of it.

Teleport is the AI Infrastructure Identity Company. We're solving one of the hardest problems in security: giving every human, machine, workload, and AI agent a cryptographically secured identity, improving engineering velocity while maintaining security. We make trusted computing simple. This gives you the freedom, power, and autonomy to build and innovate with confidence.

Remote-first and globally distributed, we work with companies like Nasdaq, DoorDash, and Elastic to secure infrastructure for an AI world.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for product-focused systems engineers to work on Teleport Core Product.

You will work on problems ranging from performance and scalability, security and networking, to integrations with external systems.

You will work on the full product lifecycle from working with customers to understand their problems, writing RFDs for your proposed design, implementing, testing, and documenting.

Teleport is an open core project, and most of the code you will write will be open source and written in Go.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Become an expert on scalability, performance, and reliability of Teleport in large deployments.
• Design, develop, and ship outstanding, high-quality products.
• Lead a distributed team of outstanding engineers.
• Write most of the code in Go.
• Closely collaborate with other teams at Teleport on matters related to scalability and performance.
• Work directly with our customers to diagnose and remediate performance issues.
• Grow your technical expertise.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Willingness to work collaboratively with Teleport's engineers on coding challenge in Go https://github.com/gravitational/careers/blob/main/challenges/systems/challenge-1.md as part of the interview process.
• Builder mentality and experience -- you love being hands-on and building zero-to-one products.
• Extensive Go experience.
• Extensive experience developing scalable, reliable, and performant distributed systems and platforms.
• Strong team leadership.
• Engineering management experience.
• Linux systems engineering experience.
• Knowledge of Identity Management, RBAC, ABAC, and zero-trust security models.
• Intellectual curiosity and a willingness to master new technologies.
• Transparency, honesty, and a no-ego mindset.
• Significant contributions in Open Source is a big plus.

HOW WE HIRE

Our process is designed to be straightforward and respectful of your time. We skip performative rounds and focus on what matters: understanding how you think and what you can do.

For this role, we use a take-home challenge that mirrors real work at Teleport — on your time, your way. You'll have support from the team throughout.

1. Zoom meeting with a Teleport recruiter. You’ll learn about the company, our products, compensation philosophy, interview process, and key requirements.

2. Zoom meeting with the Hiring Manager. The Hiring Manager will walk you through the coding challenge and answer your questions.

3. Coding challenge collaboration. The day after your meeting with the Hiring Manager, you join a Slack channel and complete a coding challenge in Go https://github.com/gravitational/careers/blob/main/challenges/systems/challenge-1.md using GitHub. The challenge usually takes about 2 weeks and ends with a Zoom meeting with the Hiring Manager and a member of the interview team to review your solution.

4. If your challenge solution meets our bar, you'll receive an offer to join Teleport.

Why Teleport

You're joining a company where the problem is real, the team is small, and your work shows up directly in the product. We're not a big company, you won't get lost in a crowd. You'll have the freedom and autonomy to do what you're great at, alongside teammates who care about doing it right and want to see you succeed. The work is collaborative, there’s real room to grow, and the mission is one worth showing up for.

Remote-first and globally distributed, we're genuinely passionate about what we're building.

The Benefits

At Teleport, we believe your career is more important than a list of perks. That's why we focus on making your day-to-day the best it can be — giving you the autonomy, access, and support to do the best work of your career.

• Extensive health coverage
• Annual expense budget
• Rest and recovery policies that maximize your ability to recharge
• Investment in your future with retirement savings plans
• Professional development opportunities

Teleport is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any classifications protected by federal, state, or local law.

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