Staff Software Engineer, Backend

Helius

2d•Remote

About The Position

We're looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to take ownership of one of our core systems - Gatekeeper, Data Streaming, Historical APIs, or Account Index. These are the foundational layers of Helius's infrastructure, operating at the intersection of extreme performance requirements and real-world scale. Each system sits in the critical path of the Solana ecosystem. At this level, you're not just building - you're setting technical direction, making architectural decisions that shape the platform for years, and raising the bar for everyone around you. You'll work directly with founders and engineering leadership to define what we build and how we build it. Small team, enormous scope, and the expectation that you'll own your domain end-to-end.

Requirements

8+ years of backend engineering with a strong track record building large-scale, production-grade systems
Deep systems-level expertise - you operate comfortably at the layer where software meets hardware
Proficiency in Rust (strongly preferred) or equivalent systems programming language (C++, Go)
Demonstrated ability to own and evolve complex systems end-to-end, from architecture to production operations
Experience leading ambiguous, cross-team technical initiatives and driving them to completion
Performance engineering instincts - you've profiled hot paths, understood the root cause, and fixed it at the code level
High ownership, high intensity - you thrive in fast-moving environments and hold yourself to an exceptional standard
Prior exposure to engineering cultures that prioritize operational excellence, performance, and customer reliability at scale

Nice To Haves

Deep expertise in one or more of: distributed storage, streaming infrastructure, edge networking, or query engines
Experience building or operating systems at petabyte scale or microsecond latency budgets
On-call ownership of mission-critical production services
Interest in Solana, blockchain infrastructure, or real-time financial systems
Open source contributions or technical writing that demonstrates depth
Mix of large and small company experience strongly preferred - you've built the habits and can operate at both speeds

Responsibilities

Own the technical direction for a core backend system - architecture, reliability, performance, and roadmap
Design and implement solutions to the hardest problems in your domain - distributed systems, storage engines, streaming pipelines, or edge infrastructure
Drive performance engineering across your system - profiling, benchmarking, and pushing latency and throughput to the limit
Set standards for operational excellence - observability, incident response, and making systems simpler and safer to operate
Partner with founders and engineering leadership on long-term technical strategy
Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, drive technical consensus, and influence without authority
Identify and solve complex, ambiguous problems that span multiple systems