Staff Backend Software Engineer

About the role

We are seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to join our team. You will be responsible for designing and building the backend systems that manage printer identity, connectivity, provisioning, updates, and telemetry. You will also design and improve how our printers come up, install, and update, from initial bring-up through in-field OS updates and rollbacks. You will design the protocols, connections, and failure modes that keep a printer talking to our cloud reliably from anywhere in the world.

Responsibilities

• Own the services behind the fleet: manage printer identity, connectivity, provisioning, updates, and telemetry
• Build the Linux layer underneath: design and improve OS provisioning and lifecycle
• Own the network between cloud and printer: design protocols, connections, and failure modes
• Drive major initiatives end-to-end: take full ownership of substantial backend initiatives
• Own reliability alongside the team: participate in on-call, drive incident response, and turn recurring pain into permanent fixes
• Translate real product and operational needs into robust designs, raise the bar through design and code review, and mentor engineers around you

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production backend services
• Deep Linux fundamentals: processes, filesystems, networking, systemd, boot and init, package management, users and permissions, and ability to debug production Linux problems from first principles
• Strong networking skills: TCP/IP, TLS, DNS, HTTP, WebSockets, NAT and firewall traversal, and comfort reasoning about connectivity between services in the cloud and devices on customer networks
• Hands-on experience with OS provisioning and lifecycle: installing, imaging, updating, and rolling back Linux systems in the field, including A/B update strategies or similar patterns
• Expert-level proficiency in at least one modern backend language (Python, Go, Node/TypeScript, C++, or similar), and comfort dropping into others when needed
• Production mindset: think about failure modes, blast radius, observability, and upgrade paths from the start, and carry a pager for systems you built
• Strong communication, debugging, and problem-solving skills

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Skills

• Experience building IoT or connected-device backends at scale
• Hands-on experience with MQTT or similar pub/sub protocols in production, including broker operations, QoS trade-offs, and offline/reconnect semantics
• Experience with fleet management, remote diagnostics, or OTA update systems
• Familiarity with edge compute, embedded Linux distributions, or bring-up of new hardware
• Familiarity with Bazel or another polyglot monorepo build system

Benefits

Carbon offers a comprehensive total rewards package that includes equity, benefits, and time off programs. For details on our total rewards package, visit here.

Pay

The compensation bracket for this position is $209,600 - $314,400 (per year).

Schedule

Not specified.