Principal Software Engineer - Backend

Role Description

Dragos is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join our team in building the leading OT Security Platform. We work in a matrix style engineering organization which means in this role, you will be part of our Backend Community. To be successful at Dragos you will need to:

• Be passionate about your craft, minding the details while working quickly.
• Have a strong product sense and care deeply about the customers and problems we are solving.
• Be self-directed with a strong work ethic and ability to operate autonomously.
• Have excellent communication skills for remote collaboration, working well across engineering disciplines.

At Dragos, we don’t hire engineers whose only mission in life is to write code. We are looking for backend engineers who yearn to contribute to more than just a code base and who are willing to stretch themselves to accomplish the mission.

Our backend community is the heartbeat of the Dragos Platform, playing a pivotal role in the success of our customers’ ability to secure their OT environments. As a backend engineer you will:

• Design and implement robust, testable, high-performance systems and tools in Rust.
• Optimize existing software architectures to enhance speed and efficiency.
• Actively participate in all phases of the development lifecycle, including debugging and optimization, ensuring and elevating software quality.
• Stay informed about the latest advancements in Rust programming, security, and software design principles, helping to foster an environment of continuous learning and improvement.
• Give and receive peer feedback on a normal cadence as part of our review cycle.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience developing backend systems at scale in high-performance team environments
• 5+ years of experience in relational databases such as Postgres
• 5+ years of experience with NoSQL databases such as Elasticsearch
• 5+ years of experience working in a microservices architecture
• Solid experience and understanding of Rust, with architectural understanding of language design tradeoffs
• Experience integrating with third party devices and data providers
• Experience incorporating AI tools, models, or services into development workflows
• Proven track record of mentoring and developing senior engineers
• Demonstrated ability to lead architectural decisions and influence technical strategy across multiple teams

Requirements

• Experience building and operating distributed systems at scale with a focus on reliability
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and cloud‑native architectures
• Experience with containerization (Docker)
• Strong understanding of observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana)
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines and working with IaC tools (Terraform)
• Experience building information security–focused products or applying secure coding practices
• Experience with Kotlin, Go, or Python in production environments
• Experience mentoring team members or leading technical initiatives

Benefits

• Salary: $225,000
• Competitive Equity Package
• Comprehensive Benefits Plan