Staff Software Engineer - Backend

ZeroDrift, Inc.•New York, NY

11h•$180,000 - $220,000•Hybrid

About The Position

ZeroDrift is building the AI-native enforcement infrastructure for enterprise communication. We are the first platform that enforces the rules before an AI message is ever sent, fixing violations in real time across every channel where AI speaks for the business. Everything goes out clean. Nothing dangerous comes in. As AI starts to communicate on behalf of entire organizations, the gap between what compliance requires and what companies can actually enforce is widening fast. Every existing solution monitors after send, once the risk is already out the door. ZeroDrift enforces before send. Enforcement did not exist as a category. We created it. We are backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and other world-class VCs, and built by a team from Microsoft, Google, and Goldman Sachs, led by a repeat AI founder.

Requirements

5+ years building and running production backends at scale
Strong in a modern backend language (for example Go, Python, Java, or Node)
Solid with APIs, distributed systems, databases, queues, and caching
Comfortable with cloud, containers, and CI/CD
You care about latency, reliability, and clean code in equal measure
You must be authorized to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

Low-latency or real-time systems
Built SDKs, proxies, or developer-facing infrastructure
Worked with sensitive or regulated data

Responsibilities

Build the systems that let any app or AI agent ask ZeroDrift, in milliseconds, whether a message is allowed.
Own how agents and developers connect to us, and the backend that keeps every rule current.
Build the layer that connects AI agents and developer frameworks to ZeroDrift: proxies, SDKs, and agent tooling.
Own the policy backend: the connectors, the ingest of rule sources and restricted lists, and the engine that tracks when rules change.
Build the controls that decide what each agent is allowed to do.
Hit low latency and high reliability under enterprise load, since we sit in the path of every message.
Hold a high bar for security and data protection on sensitive content.