Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform (Rust)

Hercules; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited AI token budget

Vacation policy - take what you need

Healthcare, vision, dental

Daily lunches, dinners and snacks in‑o

Career growth potential

Job summary

Hercules looks for a staff level platform engineer to shape the future of AI software development in San Francisco. You will lead the Hercules platform-as-a-service, building scalable, multi-tenant infrastructure and robust APIs used by AI agents.

The role emphasizes system design, Rust-based services, and high-performance data systems, with a strong in-office preference and willingness to explore remote options for exceptional candidates.

Qualifications

• Proven experience designing scalable platform services.
• Strong background in system design and API design.
• Hands-on Rust development for production systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Hercules platform-as-a-service.
• Build fast, scalable backend services and APIs/SDKs.
• Ensure low latency, high throughput, and multi-tenant reliability.
• Operate infrastructure with strong observability and failure resilience.

Skills

System design

Architecture

Data modeling

API design

Rust

Data systems

Infrastructure

Performance

AI

Tools

Postgres

Redis

Clickhouse

Terraform

CDK

Docker

Temporal

Drizzle ORM

Otel

Typescript

React

Hono

Job description

What are we looking for?

Hercules is looking for a staff level platform engineer to help us build the future of AI software development

What will you do?

You will lead the Hercules platform-as-a-service

• Hercules Database: An enterprise-grade, database-like object model with flexible schemas and fine-grained access controls. Similar to force.com (powering Salesforce) or Airtable.
• Backend Services: A fast, scalable backend-as-a-service deeply tied to the Hercules Database
• APIs & SDKs: Design the interfaces AI agents use to build on the platform
• Performance & Scale: Engineer for low latency, high throughput, and efficient resource use
• Hosting & Infrastructure: Build and operate the infrastructure that runs customer applications reliably, with strong tenant isolation, observability, and failure resilience

What skills do we expect you to have?

We expect candidates to be incredibly strong across all of the following areas:

• Software fundamentals: system design, architecture, data modeling, and API design
• Code and codebase quality: write clean, maintainable code. Work effectively in monorepos
• Rust: build efficient, reliable production systems
• Data systems: indexing, query performance, transactions, and consistency, etc
• Infrastructure: scale large, data-intensive, multi-tenant, distributed services
• Performance: optimize latency, throughput, and resource efficiency
• AI: able to truly 10x your workflow by being on the frontier of AI coding

What’s Hercules’ stack?

• Technologies: Typescript, React, AI SDK, Postgres, Redis, Clickhouse, Tailwind, IaC (CDK, Terraform), Docker, Otel, Hono, Drizzle ORM, Temporal
• Clouds: Cloudflare, AWS
• AI Models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google

What are Hercules’ operating principles?

Hercules’ operating principles guide how we make decisions every day. We take them very seriously. Most of the principles can be learned on the job, however, we do specifically filter for the following principles in our hiring process:

1. We ship. We ship fast, iterate, and correct mistakes quickly. Our bias for action speeds up our learning and delights our customers.
2. We strive for excellence. Doing things well is in our DNA. We have good taste. We get the details right. Our outputs are exceptionally simple and self-serve. We’re proud of our work.
3. We are hungry. We are willing to work hard and break through walls to achieve the outcomes we want. We are willing to operate at any level to get things done.

Is Hercules in-office or remote?

Hercules founding team works in-office in San Francisco (Kearny and Bush). We have a very strong preference for in office. We are open to remote for exceptional candidates who are willing to 1) work in US time zones and 2) travel to the office regularly.

What are Hercules’ benefits?

• Unlimited AI token budget
• Take what you need vacation policy
• Healthcare, vision, and dental
• Daily lunches, dinners and snacks in the office
• We guarantee you will do the best work of your career here

What’s the compensation?

$100k-$300k + equity (variable based on seniority, equity, and location)