Staff Software Engineer, Backend Services

Summary

Join The Browser Company as their first Backend Services Engineer and play a pivotal role in designing, developing, and optimizing scalable backend systems for their innovative browser, Arc. You will lead large-scale projects, mentor engineering teams, and influence critical architectural decisions. This role requires significant experience in backend systems, technical leadership, and cloud infrastructure. The company offers a competitive salary ($225,000-275,000 USD), flexible compensation model, comprehensive benefits (including 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision), 401k, flexible vacation, remote work options, and paid parental leave. The Browser Company is a remote-first, distributed team with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in a technical leadership role, 6+ years of experience working on large-scale backend systems
• Demonstrated ability to lead high-impact, cross-team projects and influence architectural decisions at a company-wide level
• A strategic mindset, with the ability to see the bigger picture and align technical decisions with business goals
• Experience working with GCP, AWS, or Azure, with significant expertise in at least one of these, including proficiency in infrastructure-as-code practices and tools (e.g., Terraform)
• Experience setting up monitoring and observability for cloud infrastructure, e.g. with datadog, and using these tools to deliver improvements
• Proficiency in a programming language like TypeScript, Go, Java, Swift, etc
• You're passionate about building tools and systems that make other engineers more productive and strive to make them elegant and maintainable
• We’re primarily focused on hiring in North American time zones and require that folks have 4+ hours of overlap time with team members in Eastern Time Zone

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and optimization of scalable, robust backend systems that are critical to Arc’s success
• Own large-scale, high-impact technical projects that cut across multiple teams and directly influence our product and company strategy
• Serve as a technical leader and mentor, providing guidance and oversight to engineering teams on complex technical issues, architectural decisions, and best practices
• Influence and contribute to critical architectural decisions, ensuring we’re always building with the future in mind
• Drive cross-functional collaboration with product, security, and engineering teams to define technical vision and ensure the backend infrastructure evolves to support Arc’s growth and product innovation
• Design application backends, APIs, protocols, data structures, and assess system design
• Design and implement backend systems to support core product needs such as AI inference (eg. via self-hosting LLMs), proxying to other services, and data syncing across devices
• Support multiple clouds and LLM providers for improved availability
• Design highly performant, resilient, and scalable systems that provide a high quality experience for users on desktop and mobile platforms worldwide
• Implement effective observability and monitoring for our backend services
• Identify opportunities to iterate on our infrastructure to improve efficiency, developer productivity, or reduce costs

Benefits

• With our flexible compensation model, employees have the ability to choose the cash-to-equity ratio that best suits their individual needs. Every offer we extend includes three options: a salary-optimized offer, an equity-optimized offer, and a balanced offer
• The annual salary range for this role is $225,000-275,000 USD . The actual salary range offered will vary based on experience level and interview performance
• Comprehensive benefits package with employee medical, dental, and vision - we cover 100% of premiums for employees, and up to 95% for dependents
• 401k plan
• Flexible vacation policy - on average, our team members take between 15-20 vacation days plus federal holidays (holidays vary by location)
• Remote-friendly working environment - our core working hours are 11 AM-2 PM Eastern Time, Monday-Friday
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• $1,500 USD home office stipend
• Employees based in the US also receive additional services like free annual memberships to One Medical (where available), Talkspace, Teladoc, and HealthAdvocate