Senior Backend Engineer

Sauron•San Francisco, CA

3d•$190,000 - $230,000

About The Position

Sauron is building a new category of residential security powered by robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and autonomous systems. Behind every intelligent decision our products make is a robust backend platform that securely processes data, coordinates devices, powers customer experiences, and enables real-time operations at scale. We are looking for a highly skilled, thoughtful, and collaborative Backend Engineer to help design, develop, and scale the infrastructure that powers our products. You will work across cloud services, distributed systems, APIs, device connectivity, data pipelines, and operational tooling to support a growing fleet of intelligent security systems deployed in the real world. The ideal candidate is passionate about building reliable systems, enjoys solving complex technical challenges, and thrives in a highly collaborative environment. You'll help shape our platform architecture while contributing directly to products that protect families and homes every day.

Requirements

5-7+ years of software development experience, preferably building production backend systems.
Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Go, Python, Rust, Java, or C++.
Experience designing and operating distributed systems and microservice architectures.
Strong understanding of API design, including REST, gRPC, and event-driven communication patterns.
Experience working with relational and non-relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, or DynamoDB.
Experience deploying and operating applications in cloud environments, preferably AWS.
Familiarity with containerization technologies such as Docker and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
Strong understanding of system design, performance optimization, reliability, and scalability.
Experience implementing monitoring, logging, and observability solutions.
Excellent debugging, testing, and software engineering fundamentals.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with robotics, autonomous systems, IoT, or connected devices.
Knowledge of streaming systems such as Kafka, NATS, or RabbitMQ.
Experience building real-time data processing pipelines.
Familiarity with video processing, computer vision infrastructure, or large-scale media systems.
Experience with infrastructure-as-code and cloud automation tools.
Understanding of security best practices and secure system design.
Experience working in fast-paced startup environments.
Experience taking products from 0→1 and scaling them through rapid growth.

Responsibilities

Designing and building scalable backend services that power Sauron's products and operations.
Developing APIs and service interfaces used by mobile applications, web applications, and connected devices.
Building real-time systems that process telemetry, sensor data, video events, and security alerts.
Architecting cloud infrastructure that supports reliable communication between edge devices and backend services.
Designing secure authentication, authorization, and identity management systems.
Building event-driven and distributed systems capable of operating at large scale.
Working closely with robotics, perception, mobile, and product teams to deliver end-to-end solutions.
Translating business and product requirements into high-quality, maintainable production systems.
Improving system performance, reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
Being proactive, self-starting, and continuously learning new technologies, methods, and approaches to solve challenging problems.