Staff/Principal Backend Software Engineer

The role

You will design and build backend systems that turn real-time operational data into mission-critical capabilities. You will own core services operating across cloud and on-prem environments and make high-leverage architecture decisions.

What you will do

• Architect and build high-throughput backend services that process real-time operational data.
• Lead technical design reviews and choose pragmatic approaches for new features and system improvements.
• Design event-driven and distributed systems that are resilient, observable, and performance-tuned.
• Define stable APIs for internal and external consumers.
• Improve engineering excellence through code reviews, standards, testing strategy, and incident practices.
• Build and maintain CI/CD workflows.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and lead incident response.
• Partner with product and operational stakeholders to translate needs into technical plans.
• Contribute to technical strategy and roadmap planning.
• Support hiring by participating in interviews.

Required qualifications

• 10+ years building scalable backend systems in production environments.
• 4+ years of experience in Golang, or 4+ years writing server-side business logic in an object-oriented language (Java, Kotlin, C#, Python) or systems language (C, C++, Rust) with strong system design
• Led technical initiatives end-to-end, including architecture, execution, and delivery.
• Experience designing distributed systems.
• Built cloud-native services and operated them in production.
• Strong security fundamentals: secure coding, threat modeling, and defensible design choices.
• Track record mentoring engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, and feedback.
• Strong communication skills.

Nice to have

• Experience designing data models and queries in graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, AWS Neptune).
• Used relational databases (ex: Postgres, MySQL, or MariaDB) to solve business problems and are able to reason about query performance.
• Worked on defense, intelligence, or security-focused products with real operational users.
• Shipped large-scale data processing systems (streaming, near-real-time analytics, or similar).
• Integrated ML/AI capabilities into production systems in a practical, measurable way.
• Open-source contributions or personal projects that demonstrate strong engineering craft.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision plan options.
• Life / AD&D, disability coverage options.
• Paid parental leave for eligible full-time employees: 12 weeks for birthing parents, 4 for non-birthing parents, 6 weeks for adoptive, foster, or intended parents through surrogacy.
• Paid holidays and flexible PTO.
• 401(k) with pre-tax and Roth options.
• HSA/FSA options, dependent care FSA.

Before you apply

• Role is limited to U.S. citizens.

About the company

Founded in 2024, Twenty Technologies industrializes offensive cyber operations for the U.S. and its allies. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Twenty has raised $168M from various investors.