About the role

Staff Backend Engineer owning core systems for Helius, a Solana developer platform. Driving distributed infrastructure architecture, performance, reliability, and technical direction.

Responsibilities

Own the technical direction for a core backend system, including architecture, reliability, performance, and roadmap
Design and implement solutions for complex distributed systems, storage engines, streaming pipelines, or edge infrastructure problems
Drive performance engineering through profiling, benchmarking, and optimization of latency and throughput
Set standards for operational excellence, observability, incident response, and simpler, safer operations
Partner with founders and engineering leadership on long-term technical strategy
Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, drive technical consensus, and influence without authority
Identify and solve complex, ambiguous problems spanning multiple systems

8+ years of backend engineering experience
Strong track record building large-scale, production-grade systems
Deep systems-level expertise
Proficiency in Rust, or equivalent systems programming language such as C++ or Go
Ability to own and evolve complex systems end-to-end, from architecture to production operations
Experience leading ambiguous, cross-team technical initiatives and driving them to completion
Performance engineering experience, including profiling hot paths, identifying root causes, and fixing issues at the code level
High ownership and ability to thrive in fast-moving environments
Prior exposure to engineering cultures prioritizing operational excellence, performance, and customer reliability at scale
Experience in distributed storage, streaming infrastructure, edge networking, or query engines preferred
Experience operating systems at petabyte scale or microsecond latency budgets preferred
On-call ownership of mission-critical production services preferred
Interest in Solana, blockchain infrastructure, or real-time financial systems preferred
Open source contributions or technical writing preferred
Mix of large and small company experience strongly preferred