Staff Software Engineer, Hercules Database (Rust)

Hercules; United States; Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Vision and dental

AI token budget

Meals at office

Flexible vacation

Job summary

Hercules is seeking a lead platform engineer to oversee the infrastructure stack used for AI-powered software.

You will design backend platforms, APIs, and SDKs for AI agents, optimize performance, and ensure scalable, multi-tenant hosting with strong data architecture. This full-time role requires location in the United States with travel to SF office.

Qualifications

• Staff-level platform engineering experience and strong software fundamentals, including system design and architecture.
• Production experience building efficient, reliable systems in Rust.
• Deep understanding of data systems, including indexing, query performance, transactions, and consistency.
• Experience scaling data-intensive, distributed, multi-tenant services.
• Ability to optimize performance and use AI coding tools effectively to accelerate engineering work.
• Strong judgment around maintainable code and iterative delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of a backend platform built around a flexible-schema database and fine-grained access controls.
• Design APIs and SDKs that AI agents can use to build applications on the platform.
• Improve latency, throughput, and resource efficiency across services.
• Build and operate hosting infrastructure with tenant isolation, observability, and resilience to failures.
• Maintain high standards for architecture, data modeling, API design, and code quality in a monorepo.

Skills

Platform engineering

System design & architecture

Rust

Distributed systems

Multi-tenant architecture

Performance optimization

AI coding tools

Tools

TypeScript

React

PostgreSQL

Redis

ClickHouse

Docker

Terraform

OpenTelemetry

Temporal

Hono

Drizzle ORM

Job description

Role overview

Lead platform engineering for an infrastructure stack used to build and run AI-powered software. The scope spans an enterprise data platform, connected backend services, developer interfaces for AI agents, and the infrastructure needed to host customer applications reliably at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of a backend platform built around a flexible-schema database and fine-grained access controls.
• Design APIs and SDKs that AI agents can use to build applications on the platform.
• Improve latency, throughput, and resource efficiency across services.
• Build and operate hosting infrastructure with tenant isolation, observability, and resilience to failures.
• Maintain high standards for architecture, data modeling, API design, and code quality in a monorepo.

Requirements

• Staff-level platform engineering experience and strong software fundamentals, including system design and architecture.
• Production experience building efficient, reliable systems in Rust.
• Deep understanding of data systems, including indexing, query performance, transactions, and consistency.
• Experience scaling data-intensive, distributed, multi-tenant services.
• Ability to optimize performance and use AI coding tools effectively to accelerate engineering work.
• Strong judgment around maintainable code and iterative delivery.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with technologies including TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL, Redis, ClickHouse, Docker, Terraform or CDK, OpenTelemetry, Temporal, Hono, and Drizzle ORM.
• Experience with AWS or Cloudflare and with AI model platforms.

Benefits and work setup

• Strong preference for working from the San Francisco office; remote candidates are considered if they can work US time zones and travel to the office regularly.
• Healthcare, vision, and dental coverage; flexible vacation; an AI token budget; and meals and snacks at the office.
• Compensation is listed as $100,000–$300,000 plus equity, varying by seniority and location.