Staff Software Engineer, Security Engineering

About the role

This is a Staff-level individual contributor role and the technical lead for the Security Engineering team behind Coalition Control, the platform that helps our policyholders manage their cyber risk and protect themselves from cyber crime. You'll own critical backend services end-to-end, set the technical direction, and be the person other engineers turn to for decisions and mentorship.

We operate more like a Series B startup than a big-company engineering org: small teams, lots of ownership, a strong bias for shipping and iterating, and very little ceremony. Control is evolving fast, with new products like Login Security (protection for policyholders' identities and inboxes, built on Wirespeed) just released as an MVP, and more on the way for new sets of policyholders. We build with AI throughout (Cursor and Claude), so you can just cook.

Responsibilities

Ship product fast: Work with Product, Design and Engineering to turn high-level goals into iterative plans, shape scope, and build and refine prototypes quickly, contributing across the stack with depth in backend.

Strengthen the platform: Own the technical vision, architecture, and expansion of the backend systems powering Coalition Control (Python/FastAPI, with Go services and a TypeScript/React frontend), and contribute to other Coalition Security Products. Take systems spread across many microservices and simplify them for a saner future.

Hold a high bar for engineering craft: Raise our standards for code, code reviews, testing, and reliability. Use our AI stack to gather context, define requirements, and get code written faster, so you spend your time on the decisions that matter.

Unblock and elevate the team: Lead the Control team of four engineers within a Security Engineering group of up to 15. Guide others through architectural trade-offs, give thoughtful but quick code reviews, and share what you know.

Work across lines: Partner with a wide range of teams and departments, and ramp up quickly into owning many technical decisions and their execution.

Share the pager: Join an on-call rotation across the Security Engineering team (one week roughly every eight weeks, with the team typically paged once or twice a month).

Skills and Qualifications

Proven experience as a backend engineer designing and building distributed, event-driven systems and cloud-based services in production, ideally with tools like SQS or Kafka on AWS.

Demonstrated technical leadership, including influencing architecture, setting standards, mentoring other engineers, and collaborating effectively across teams.

Strong proficiency in a modern backend language and framework. Python/FastAPI is a plus, and Go experience is not required. Comfort with TypeScript/Node.js, and React.js is a plus.

Strong, hands-on use of AI-assisted development workflows (we generate the vast majority of our code with AI tools like Cursor and Claude).

Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and maintaining APIs, as well as integrating with third-party APIs or platforms.

A track record of taking complex existing systems and making them simpler and easier to evolve.

Empathy for the people using what you build, though you don't need to come from a company with massive scale.

Solid understanding of security concepts and practices. Experience in cybersecurity is a plus, but not required.

Clear, direct communication, human to human, and a practical, outcome-oriented approach to problem solving.

Compensation

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The US base salary for this position ranges from $160,000/year in our lowest geographic market up to $230,000/year in our highest geographic market. Consistent with applicable laws, an employee's pay within this range is based on a number of factors, which include but are not limited to relevant education, skills, job-related knowledge, qualifications, work experience, credentials, and/or geographic location. Your recruiter can share more on target salary for your location during the interview process. Coalition, Inc. reserves the right to modify this range as needed.

Perks

100% medical, dental and vision coverage

Flexible PTO policy

Annual home office stipend and WeWork access

Mental & physical health wellness programs (One Medical, Headspace, Wellhub, and more)!

Competitive compensation and opportunity for advancement