Software Engineer — Osprey Project

Note: This position is available at the Software Engineer and Senior Software Engineer level. Level will be determined in the interview process.

Position Overview

Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) is seeking software engineers to join our team in building open source trust and safety tools. This role will primarily focus on the ROOST project Osprey. We are looking for a software engineer who can work with the ROOST team, users, and community contributors to collaboratively identify and design priority features and changes, and take significant responsibility in implementing that work. This is a high-ownership role; you will be the person who knows the codebase deeply, understands the user base thoroughly, and who other contributors and adopters look to for technical guidance.

Responsibilities follow the full software lifecycle, from evolving the architecture as the project grows, designing new capabilities, reviewing community contributions, to maintaining code quality and security.

If you are passionate about online safety, excited about the open source mission, and able to work well across teams, this is the role for you.

About the Osprey Project

Osprey is a high-performance, real-time safety rules engine originally developed at Discord to combat spam, abuse, botting, and scripted behavior across large-scale platforms. Today it is one of ROOST’s flagship open source projects, and is actively used by organizations like Bluesky, Discord, and Matrix.org. Osprey is critical safety software; it protects hundreds of millions of users.

The system ingests live event streams, evaluates them against human-written rules using a structured rule language (SML), and produces verdicts and automated actions - all with the ability to track entity state over time. It includes a worker/coordinator architecture, a gRPC-based RPC layer, a web UI for investigation and querying, and a plugin system for user-defined functions (UDFs) and custom backends.

Key Responsibilities

• Participate in the full development lifecycle of Osprey: design, implementation, testing, documentation, and release
• Implement new features prioritized by community feedback, emerging challenges in online safety, and ROOST's roadmap
• Participate in release milestone planning and release management
• Independently identify and propose changes and improvements for the project, and work directly with users and community members to generate feedback and consensus
• Feature and change work may look like:
  • Building data and event processing pipelines
  • Designing and implementing concurrency and horizontal scaling into systems
  • Designing and implementing abstractions that better accommodate the differences in user tech stacks
  • Improving scaling and deployment of Osprey, such as containerizing services
  • Maintaining and evolving integrations with core services, such as Apache Kafka
• Own and implement best practices for Osprey’s code quality and stability, including system health checks with CI/CD, test suites, and observability
• Working with the Technical Design Committee and ROOST team, maintain strong security practices across the project development platform (e.g. GitHub)
• Review and merge Pull Requests and triage and respond to Issues from community contributors, acting as both a technical leader and a welcoming ambassador of the project
• Write and maintain developer documentation as needed
• Engage with the ROOST community across GitHub, Discord, and Working Group meetings
• Communicate with the ROOST community and stakeholders with kindness, respect, and professionalism

Qualifications

Must-have

• Solid ability in Python, and comfortable with working across multiple languages such as TypeScript and Rust
• Minimum of 3-5 years of experience in software design and development and at least 1-2 years of experience building data-intensive applications
• Exhibits attention to detail in focusing on reliability, scalability, security, and continuous improvement.
• Strong user empathy and experience interacting directly with a variety of external users
• Proven record of working with disparate teams and individuals, understanding issues, and making decisions and communicating them transparently.

Nice-to-have

• Experience writing clear, tested production-quality code in an open source project
• Prior contributions to multi-contributor open source projects
• Experience with horizontal and vertical scaling of systems and ensuring performance through profiling and optimization
• Experience building or maintaining high-throughput, real-time event processing systems
• Experience working on spam, abuse, or safety infrastructure, and a familiarity with a trust and safety workflow
• Experience in startups, non-profits and/or small team environments
• (Note: If you do not have prior trust and safety experience, please ensure you are comfortable working with this subject matter before applying.)

About ROOST

ROOST is a community effort to build scalable and resilient safety infrastructure for the AI era. Many organizations - big and small - still lack access to basic safety resources, hindering innovation and putting users at risk.

ROOST develops, maintains, and distributes open source building blocks to safeguard global users and communities. Backed by dedicated technical teams and leading experts, ROOST meets organizations where they are and provides hands-on support at every stage of their safety journey. You can learn more about the ROOST launch and our partners’ support at roost.tools.

Compensation and Structure

• This is a full time position reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, and collaborating closely with ROOST’s Head of Product.
• ROOST is a remote organization with global hiring flexibility; this role will be expected to work a portion of hours overlapping with North American time zones.
• ROOST aims to offer competitive compensation based on candidates’ experience and their regional market. In the US, the compensation range is $160,000 - 290,000 USD. This role may be eligible for a performance-based bonus.
• Comprehensive Benefits Package:
  • Premium health, dental, and vision coverage for employee and dependents
  • 401(k) with matching
  • PTO
  • Remote-first work environment with flexible hours
• Individuals based in the US will be employed by Global Impact on behalf of ROOST.

What You'll Experience at ROOST

• As part of our early-stage team, you’ll have a pivotal role shaping how ROOST evolves during its initial growth phase
• A community that genuinely values different perspectives and approaches
• The chance to work across organizational boundaries with partners who share our mission
• The opportunity to build technology that makes a meaningful difference in online safety and helps protect vulnerable communities online
• The chance to define best practices in an emerging field and contribute to safer digital spaces globally
• Regular opportunities to engage with industry and civic leaders and working on Trust & Safety challenges
• Flexible work arrangements that prioritize results and impact over traditional office structures

How to Join Us

Please share upload resume along with a cover letter sharing why ROOST's mission resonates with you and how your experience could help us advance it.

Due to the volume of spam applications, we strongly recommend applicants include their LinkedIn, GitHub, or other referenceable profile in their cover letter or resume.

ROOST is committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of communities we aim to serve. We especially encourage applications from people whose perspectives are traditionally underrepresented in technology.