Lead Open Source Engineer

Paragon • Los Angeles, CA

11d

About The Position

Paragon is building the infrastructure layer that powers integrations for modern SaaS companies. We help teams ship and operate integrations faster by providing a scalable platform for authentication, data sync, actions, and operational reliability - so product teams can focus on their core product instead of integration complexity.
Our customers range from fast-growing startups to large enterprises, and our platform is used to run mission-critical integrations in production.
What you’ll do
Partner with internal teams building core platform infrastructure and guide its evolution with open-source readiness in mind.
Define and implement internal standards for code quality, documentation, testing, and release discipline.
Own long-term technical direction for platform components that may become open source, including extensibility, API/SDK design, backwards compatibility, and migrations.
Design contribution, review, and governance models before they’re public, so Paragon can move deliberately when the timing is right.
Help define and maintain clear boundaries between open-source and enterprise-only functionality.
Act as an internal expert and advisor on open-source strategy, tradeoffs, and best practices.
Represent Paragon externally when appropriate through writing, talks, and technical discussions.

Requirements

• Senior software engineer with experience building platforms, frameworks, or developer tooling.
• Experience leading, maintaining, or stewarding a substantial open-source project or owning a widely used internal platform with similar rigor.
• Strong technical judgment around API and SDK design, versioning, compatibility, and long-term maintainability.
• Experience working at a company that balanced open-source initiatives with a commercial product.
• Strong experience building production systems in Node.js / TypeScript, including designing and maintaining public APIs or SDKs. Deep familiarity with TypeScript’s type system and its role in developer experience is a strong plus.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, zero-to-one environments and defining strategy as you go.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience managing or maintaining a large, widely adopted open-source framework.
• Experience speaking at technical conferences or industry events.
• Background in developer platforms, integrations, or infrastructure products.
• Familiarity with open-core business models.
• Public technical writing, blogs, or talks.

Responsibilities

• Partner with internal teams building core platform infrastructure and guide its evolution with open-source readiness in mind.
• Define and implement internal standards for code quality, documentation, testing, and release discipline.
• Own long-term technical direction for platform components that may become open source, including extensibility, API/SDK design, backwards compatibility, and migrations.
• Design contribution, review, and governance models before they’re public, so Paragon can move deliberately when the timing is right.
• Help define and maintain clear boundaries between open-source and enterprise-only functionality.
• Act as an internal expert and advisor on open-source strategy, tradeoffs, and best practices.
• Represent Paragon externally when appropriate through writing, talks, and technical discussions.

Benefits

• You’ll shape Paragon’s open-source strategy from the ground up.
• You’ll work on real, production-grade infrastructure used by customers today.
• You’ll have significant influence over technical direction and long-term platform decisions.
• You’ll help determine if, when, and how Paragon shares its technology with the broader developer community.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed