Staff Software Engineer (Backend/Distributed Systems)
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 13, 2026. First seen by Alion on Apr 14, 2026.
Who We Are
We’re on a mission to stop the most dominant cyberattacks on the planet.
Cybersecurity titans are born when a new attack vector overwhelms existing defenses. When ransomware ran rampant, CrowdStrike emerged as the category leader for securing user endpoints. Today, AI has made account compromise the #1 cybercrime. LLM-powered phishing messages get past email security, allowing attackers to compromise accounts and exfiltrate sensitive data in minutes. Incumbents can't keep up. They catch these attacks late, or miss them altogether.
Enter Petra, security for when no perimeter remains. We are building an AI-driven Detection and Response platform to catch and remove attackers before they can act.
We've grown very quickly, reaching mid-7-figures in ARR in under a year - we now protect over 2.5 million users across 10,000+ businesses. We price premium, yet have extremely low customer churn. Our customers consistently tell us that Petra is the best product they've ever used. You can see a demo here.
This is a rare chance to join early and help scale to $30M+ in revenue in the next 12 months.
What You’ll Do
Ownership is everything here. Petra is a premium product and it's everyone's job to make sure it stays that way. You'll be in charge of developing and scaling our AI-powered detection platform, the core alpha on which Petra is built.
Concretely, you will:
Build and evolve our detection platform. Working closely with our founding team, you'll help design and build the systems that identify account compromise in real time - spanning signal ingestion, behavioral analysis, and AI-powered decisioning.
Architect for scale. We're growing fast. Nothing excites you more than architecting and implementing an elegant solution that'll handle 10-100x the scale in 6 months.
Raise the technical bar. As a senior voice on a lean team, your instincts and opinions shape how we build. You'll establish patterns, push for correctness, and raise the quality of everything around you.
Our stack is Node, TypeScript, React, and Python... for now.
Who You Are
3+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time working on production systems at scale.
Experience building high-stakes, data-intensive systems. Re-architecting the hot path doesn't scare you away.
Strong ML/AI integration experience. You've shipped systems that use models in production, not just experimented with them.
High agency and high output. You identify the problem, propose the solution, and execute. You're constantly looking for ways to expand your scope and circle of competence.
Sharp and scrappy. You learn fast: you ask the right questions and figure it out. You ship fast: you find the 90/10 and don't let perfect be the enemy of done.
Comfortable in a small-team, high-autonomy environment. The scope of your work is rarely handed to you, and you wouldn't have it any other way.
Proud of your craft. You care about building things that work well and hold up over time.
The Team
We're small and high-caliber. Our founders are ex-Abnormal Security, Palo Alto Networks, and Bridgewater. Other early team members include:
A Sequoia-backed founder
An engineering leader from Anduril
Quants from Citadel and Point72
You'll work directly with people who are exceptional at what they do.
Benefits and Pay:
Competitive salary. We pay top dollar for exceptional engineers.
Equity
Healthcare, dental, vision
Lunch and dinner when working in the office
401K
Commuting stipend
Equinox discount
Relocation support
This role is in-person, here in SF.
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Petra is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and welcome applicants of all backgrounds.