{"id":13501,"url":"https://alion.io/job/formal-staff-software-engineer-backend","title":"Staff Software Engineer | Systems and L7 Protocols","company":{"id":4208,"name":"Formal","domain":"formal.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/formal","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"D","score":51,"open_postings":11,"ghost_share":0.818,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":198000,"max_usd":362000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":1372},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"ClickHouse","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"Datadog","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"gRPC","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"MySQL","optional":false},{"name":"Notion","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon S3","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"SQL","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-04T16:25:40Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-04","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T22:59:08Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":134,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":133},"description":"About Formal\nFormal is building a network security platform for the AI era. As agents gain access to sensitive data and production systems, organizations need control over the actions they take and the data they receive. We enforce those controls directly in the network path, with a shared policy layer for humans and agents across databases, infrastructure, APIs, and AI tools.\nWe are trusted by leading companies such as Cursor, Decagon, Notion, and more to solve problems across data security and compliance, data quality management, and infrastructure access.\nFormal is backed by top-tiers VCs including Thrive Capital and Y Combinator with angel investors that include executives and founders from Datadog, Clickhouse, Plaid, and Vanta.\nAbout the Role\nBuild the protocol-aware proxies at the core of Formal. You'll work on how connections are established, how application-layer protocols are parsed, and how requests and responses flow between clients and upstream systems.\nThe work goes beyond conventional web backends: understanding wire protocols, managing connection and session state, and working with existing clients without breaking their behavior or adding unnecessary latency. You'll also build the distributed backend that coordinates these proxies, owning projects from research and implementation through debugging and scaling in production.\nOur stack includes Go, Rust, Temporal, and AWS, with protocol integrations spanning PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, S3, SSH, HTTP, gRPC, and MCP.\nWhat You'll Do\nBuild application-layer proxies for databases, infrastructure, and AI tools, working directly with protocols such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, SSH, HTTP, and MCP.\n\nImplement how Formal parses and modifies protocol messages, handles authentication handshakes, and manages connections and streaming responses.\n\nExtend protocol support to work with more clients, drivers, and upstream systems, preserving their expected behavior through the proxy.\n\nBuild the distributed services that configure and coordinate proxies, synchronize state, and process the events they produce.\n\nSolve production problems across the traffic path, improving throughput, latency, memory usage, and connection reliability.\n\nWhat You Need\nExperience building systems software, proxies, database internals, networking software, or distributed services.\n\nExperience with Go, Rust, or another language used for systems programming.\n\nStrong networking fundamentals, including TCP, TLS, connection management, and application-layer protocols.\n\nExperience building concurrent software and reasoning about resource usage, timeouts, and partial failures.\n\nExperience debugging production systems using logs, traces, profiling, or packet captures.\n\nA preference for simple, maintainable code and ownership from design through production.\n\nNice-to-Haves\nExperience implementing or extending protocols such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, SSH, HTTP, or gRPC.\n\nExperience with SQL parsing and programming language compiler work\n\nExperience with protocol parsers, connection multiplexing, authentication handshakes, or TLS termination.\n\nExperience with authorization systems, security infrastructure, or traffic inspection.\n\nExperience with Temporal, Kubernetes, Terraform, or operating software in customer environments.\n\nCompensation\nThis role offers cash compensation and a stock options grant.\n\nThe positioning of offers within a certain range depends on various factors, including: candidate experience, qualifications, skills, and business requirements.\n\nBenefits (for U.S.-based full-time employees)\n100% medical, dental & vision insurance coverage for you\nPartially covered for your dependents\n\nFlexible PTO","description_format":"text","description_chars":3682,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Insurance coverage","Stock options","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Network Security","Cybersecurity 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