Junior-Mid Engineer

Description

About Backslash

We are builders who want to secure the next generation of software development from the inside out.

Software development has entered a new era defined by Vibe-coding, MCP servers, and AI Agents. While these tools allow developers to build faster than ever, they also introduce a completely new frontier of security challenges that exist directly on the engineer’s machine.

Backslash is building the security layer for this new reality. We provide the essential guardrails and visibility needed to secure AI-driven workflows. By actively protecting developer computers and monitoring IDE-based AI interactions, we ensure the future of coding is as secure as it is fast.

The Role

As a Junior-Mid Software Engineer, you will join the team building the infrastructure that connects our local protection agents to our high-scale cloud backend. You will ship real features from your first weeks, with a senior engineer alongside you, and grow into owning larger pieces of the system.

• Build Backend Services: Implement and maintain microservices that receive telemetry and security events from thousands of distributed developer machines.
• Ship the Agent: Contribute to the delivery and update pipeline of our protection agent, and learn what it takes to run software reliably on engineers’ laptops with a minimal resource footprint.
• Work With Real-Time Data: Build pipelines and APIs that ingest, process, and expose security data from IDEs and local AI tools.
• Analyze Customer AI Risk: Turn raw telemetry from customers’ AI fabric (coding agents, MCP servers, IDE plugins, local models) into clear risk analysis: which agents touch what, where untrusted content enters, and which tool calls carry real exposure. Your findings feed both the product and customer conversations.
• Build the AI Validation Engine: Help develop our engine that validates AI assets (agents, MCP servers, IDE extensions, models, and the tools they call) and detects threats across them, from suspicious behavior to risky configurations.
• Deliver Features End-to-End: Take features from backend to UI, learning to present backend data and endpoint health clearly to our users.
• Learn to Build Trustworthy Software: Write tests, work within our automated quality gates, and develop the habits behind low-latency, resilient software that developers trust on their machines.

Requirements

We’re looking for someone early in their career with strong fundamentals, curiosity about how systems work, and the drive to learn fast.

• Engineering Foundation: 0-3 years of professional experience, or a CS degree / equivalent with substantial hands-on work (internships, open source, or personal projects that actually run).
• Programming Fundamentals: Solid grasp of data structures, algorithms, and clean, readable code. Comfortable in at least one typed language. Hands-on TypeScript/Node.js is a strong plus.
• Backend Basics: Understanding of how web services work: HTTP APIs, databases, async processing. Exposure to a server-side framework (NestJS, Express, or similar) is a plus.
• Systems Curiosity: Interest in distributed systems, message queues, and how data flows between services at scale. You don’t need to have built one yet. You need to want to.
• Tooling: Familiarity with Git and Docker basics. Any cloud exposure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) is a plus.
• Quick Learner & Flexible: You pick up new technologies fast, adapt when priorities shift, and are happy to jump between backend, data, and security work as the product needs.
• Startup DNA: You want ownership, you ask questions, and you would rather solve the problem than wait for a spec.

Bonus points for

• Full-Stack Exposure: Built something with React or Vue.
• Endpoint & Systems: Tinkered with software that runs locally on macOS, Linux, or Windows (CLI tools, background processes, system scripts).
• Cybersecurity Interest: Security coursework, CTFs, or genuine curiosity about endpoint protection and securing developer workflows.
• AI Tooling: Used AI coding agents or MCP servers, or built something on top of LLM APIs.
• Data Analysis: Comfortable with SQL or pandas, and turning messy logs into a chart someone else can read.

What You’ll Do

• Write code that goes to production: Your code runs on real developers’ machines and in our live backend from day one, not in a sandbox.
• Own features: Take features from idea to production, with clear ownership over the backend services behind them.
• Think like an attacker: Help build the threat model for AI-driven development: map how agents, MCP servers, and tools can be abused, and turn that into detections in the product.
• Grow fast: Work alongside senior engineers with code review on everything you ship, on a security problem nobody has solved yet.