Founding Software Engineer

You’ll be one of the first backend hires, helping define not just what we build, but how we build it.

10+ years of backend or data engineering experience, ideally with a focus on distributed systems or streaming architectures.

Strong in Golang and/or Python ; experienced with gRPC, REST, and working in Unix/Linux environments.

You’ve been the architect behind at least one complex distributed system—ideally involving real-time data, search, or observability—and can explain your design decisions clearly.

Familiarity with schema evolution, ORMs, and data mapping strategies in evolving analytics systems.

Comfort working with Kubernetes and cloud-native services in AWS/GCP/Azure.

Ability to debug deeply, reason about performance tradeoffs, and own systems end to end.

Experience with semantic search, vector embeddings, AI agent infrastructure (e.g. LangChain, CrewAI, Autogen, etc.) and integrating LLM telemetry or foundation model outputs into observability pipelines.

Familiarity with OpenTelemetry, event trace modeling, Model Context Protocol (MCP), or real-time AI evaluation architectures.

Based in or willing to spend time in the San Francisco Bay Area for in-person collaboration.

Our team is small and focused, valuing autonomy and real impact over titles and management. We need strong technical skills, a proactive mindset, and clear written communication, as much of our work is asynchronous. If you're organized, take initiative, and want to work closely with customers to shape our products, you'll fit in well here.

Finally, we pay market cash compensation and generally above-market equity. The compensation package for this role is benchmarked using Carta Total Compensation and reflects real-time market data for our company’s size, this role’s level, and your geographic location. We have well-designed and generous benefits.

https://www.thirdlaw.io/