Sr. Application Engineer

CIQ OVERVIEW

CIQ builds the enterprise infrastructure that powers the world's most demanding workloads. From the operating system layer through AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, and cloud-native orchestration, CIQ delivers the speed, security, scalability, and sovereignty that major enterprises, government agencies, and research institutions depend on.

CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and the developer of the RLC Pro family of Enterprise Linux distributions, Fuzzball workload orchestration, Warewulf Pro cluster provisioning, and Ascender Pro automation. Our customers include some of the largest and most technically sophisticated organizations in the world, working across HPC, AI/ML, defense, and regulated industries.

We are a company of builders, operators, and open source practitioners. If you want to do work that matters, at a company that is genuinely changing how enterprise infrastructure gets built and run, we want to talk.

POSITION SUMMARY

As a Sr. Application Engineer, you will serve as a key contributor to the development and expansion of Ascender Pro and other internal application projects. You will take ownership of engineering work across both frontend and backend systems, building and shipping features at a high velocity. This role is approximately 50/50 frontend and backend, with an emphasis on backend proficiency. Additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Design, develop, and maintain application features using Python (backend) and React/TypeScript (frontend).
• Contribute to additional projects built in Go as needed.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools effectively while maintaining the judgment to validate and correct AI-generated output.
• Collaborate closely with the existing engineering team to ship production-quality code quickly.
• Participate in architecture decisions and help define best practices for the application stack.
• Troubleshoot, debug, and resolve issues across the full stack.
• Support other internal engineering initiatives as bandwidth allows.

NEEDED TO SUCCEED

Successful candidates will have:

• Strong proficiency in Python for backend development.
• Solid hands-on experience with React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and NPM.
• Experience with or willingness to work in Go.
• Demonstrated ability to work at a fast pace and power through high volumes of work.
• Practical experience using AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Copilot) with the critical thinking to know when AI output is valid and when it is not.
• Comfort working across the full stack with an emphasis on backend systems.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a self-directed work ethic.
• A friendly, collaborative, humble, honest, and always striving to be better attitude.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• 6-8+ years of professional software development experience.
• Proven track record building and shipping production applications in Python and modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks.
• Experience with Go is a strong plus.
• Familiarity with Ascender, AWX, or Ansible automation platforms is a plus but not required.
• Experience with event-driven architectures, infrastructure automation, or DevOps tooling is a plus.

BENEFITS

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• Flexible paid time off.

• Employee stock options.

• Remote work; no travel required for most positions.