Search Engineer

Firecrawl•Toronto, ON

1d•$235,000 - $260,000•Onsite

About The Position

You'll keep Firecrawl connected to the open web. Every product we ship depends on reliably accessing pages at web scale, and the modern web actively resists automation with detection systems, challenge flows, and fingerprinting that evolve weekly. This role is equal parts research and engineering: understand how those systems work at the deepest level, then turn that understanding into infrastructure that keeps our scraping fast, reliable, and resilient. If you like taking apart obfuscated JavaScript on a Tuesday and shipping the fix to production on Wednesday, this is for you. About Firecrawl Firecrawl is the easiest way to turn the web into data AI agents can use. One API call converts any URL into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data. It's the boring-hard problem everyone building with LLMs eventually hits, solved. We hit 8 figures in ARR in year one and more than doubled it in year two. We have 180k+ GitHub stars, putting us in the top 50 repositories of all time, and developers, agents, and category-defining AI companies build on us every day. Growth like this is rare, and we're just getting started. We're a small team punching far above our weight, working out of SF HQ and our new Toronto Hub. Everyone here owns a real piece of the product and company, end to end, and runs it themselves. No hiding behind process or headcount. This is a place for people who want to work at the frontier: an AI company building the infrastructure other AI companies run on, not one bolting AI onto an existing product. We move fast, go deep, and are building the tools superintelligence will rely on to gather data from the web.

Requirements

Strong JavaScript/TypeScript and/or Python, and comfortable picking up whatever a problem demands
Real understanding of rendering, JS engines, headless automation (CDP, Playwright, Puppeteer), and where automated browsers differ from real ones
Solid grasp of HTTP/TLS, proxies, and browser and device fingerprinting
You can read minified, obfuscated code and figure out what it's actually checking
You go deep on how something works, then land the fix in production, not just a writeup

Nice To Haves

Deobfuscating JavaScript and VM-based obfuscation
network-level fingerprinting (TLS/HTTP2 signatures, JA3/JA4)
running large browser or proxy fleets in production
prior work at a scraping, web data, security research, or automation company

Responsibilities

Reverse engineer detection: Research how modern websites detect and challenge automated traffic, and take apart those mechanisms and challenge flows
Find the signals: Identify the browser, device, network, and behavioral signals that separate automated access from human traffic
Replicate and harden: Reproduce those signals synthetically in authorized test environments to validate and harden our approaches
Turn research into production: Build the automation, diagnostic, and monitoring tools that keep scrape reliability high as the web shifts
Own scrape success rate: Measure it, explain regressions, and ship the fixes
Ship fleet-wide: Work with platform engineers to roll improvements out across the crawling fleet at scale

Benefits

Salary that makes sense: $235,000–$260,000 USD/year (SF) / $217,000–$233,000 CAD/year (Toronto), based on impact, not tenure
Gain competitive equity in what you're helping build
15 days mandatory PTO, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded). Take the time you need to recharge
12 weeks fully paid parental leave, for all parents
$100 USD/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human
Expense up to $1,000 USD/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally
Team offsites: A change of scenery, minus the trust falls
3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new
Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for partner and kids). No weird loopholes, just care that works
Employer-paid basic life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs
Teladoc for the couch doctor visit, plus Rightway to answer coverage questions and fight billing errors for you
Talkspace, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule
Carrot, covering you and your partner
Free confidential counseling, legal and financial consults, and online will prep through Guardian
401(k) plan: Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you
HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits to help your wallet out a bit
Extra life and AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, plus pet, legal, and identity protection through MetLife
Extended health, dental, and vision through Manulife (Diamond, the top tier), 100% employer-paid for you, your partner, and your kids
Employer-paid life, AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs
Dialogue Premium, so you can see a doctor or nurse from your couch, any hour
Talkspace Elite, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule
Carrot, covering you and your partner
Group RRSP through Wealthsimple, so future-you can thank you
Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy
A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us
Snacks, drinks, team lunches, glass-walled views down University Avenue, and a home base steps from Union Station
A PRESTO card loaded for GO Transit, subway, and streetcar, plus station parking if you drive to the train. Winter-proof, on us