Senior Backend Software Engineer, Cloud… at Gravitational · Oakland

Unified Identity Securing Classic and AI Infrastructure Teleport, the AI Infrastructure Identity Company, prepares organizations for an AI future by establishing a unified identity layer for infrastructure, with humans, machines, workloads, and AI agents secured cryptographically with a hardware root of trust rather than vulnerable credentials. By replacing fragmented identity and access management systems with Infrastructure Identity, Teleport scales zero trust across cloud and on-prem environments, eliminating the complexity and risk created by identity fragmentation and credential sprawl. Teleport protects infrastructure from identity attacks, accelerates engineering by reducing infrastructure complexity, and secures non-deterministic agentic workflows. Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Teleport operates globally, with industry-leading customers such as Nasdaq, IBM, Doordash, and Elastic. Our Vision Today's computing environments have too much complexity, too many network boundaries, and too little trust. Complexity slows engineers down and leads to human errors. Complex systems can’t be secure despite the red tape of bureaucracy. We make trusted computing simple. This gives engineers the freedom to move and build a better future. Why Teleport Teleport addresses the overlooked intersection between cybersecurity and infrastructure—an area companies have historically tried to manage through a fragmented mix of tools like PAM, network-centric controls, and fragmented secrets management. This approach was already inefficient, but it fundamentally breaks down in the era of AI. AI changes the landscape in three critical ways. First, non-human, machine, and AI identities now outnumber human ones, driving massive secrets sprawl while worsening anonymity. Second, anonymity is incompatible with AI workloads: these systems are inherently non-deterministic, operate across many services and environments, and therefore require strong identity, continuous trust, and end-to-end visibility to function safely and correctly. Third, the non-deterministic nature of AI makes reliability and scalability non-negotiable—systems must be resilient, observable, and with access control guardrails, because failures and unexpected behavior cannot be handled with static controls or manual intervention. Solving this problem requires a fundamentally different approach: a unified identity layer that spans machines, workloads, humans, and agents. Identity becomes the security control plane that replaces network location and long-lived secrets as the basis of trust. Ephemeral privileges are critical in this model—privileges must be granted just-in-time, limited to the task at hand, and automatically expire, dramatically reducing blast radius in systems where behavior cannot be fully predicted. Finally, real-time intelligence is essential: in fast-moving, AI-driven environments, access decisions must continuously adapt to context, behavior, and system state, rather than relying on static policies defined in advance. Teleport addresses the growing gap between today’s cyber and infrastructure security posture and what modern, AI-driven systems actually require. As AI systems proliferate, attack surfaces and pathways multiply, giving adversaries unprecedented leverage. The result is an inflection point: without re-anchoring security and infrastructure around identity, real-time trust, and ephemeral privileges, the volume and impact of security breaches will only accelerate. About Us Teleport is the Infrastructure Identity Company, modernizing identity, access, and policy for infrastructure, improving engineering velocity and resiliency of critical infrastructure against human factors and/or compromise. We are a fast-growing, well-funded Y-Combinator company. We value our craft, are strong supporters of work/life balance, and embrace a culture of humility, honesty, and transparency. About this job The Teleport Cloud Platform team architects a performant and scalable cloud platform that realizes the promise of Teleport as a SaaS product. The team is focused on scalability, security, and analytics of Teleport on our Cloud platform. They build multi-cluster Kubernetes controllers, networking services, platform monitoring tools, and more. You will work on problems ranging from networking and performance to security and integrations with external systems. Most of the code you will write will be written in Go. We strongly encourage you to explore our GitHub Repo https://github.com/gravitational to get a taste of what we are building. Important information - You must be a current resident of the US. - We require to be in-person in our Oakland, CA, office for the onboarding week. - We conduct background checks. A sample of recent projects: - Multi-cluster Kubernetes operators for managing Teleport at scale - Zero-downtime upgrades for services with long-lived tunnels - Global ingress stack with Envoy, Gateway API, and ALPN routing - Reduced onboarding time for new customer instances - Migration to EKS Requirements - Willingness to collaboratively work with Teleports’ engineers on coding challenge in Go https://github.com/gravitational/careers/blob/main/challenges/systems/challenge-1.md as part of the interview process. - Extensive Go experience - Strong expertise with Kubernetes, including experience writing controllers and extending Kubernetes via APIs - Extensive experience developing scalable, reliable, and performant systems - Strong software-related security experience and strong interest in security space - Proficiency with AWS and other cloud services - Linux systems engineering experience - Networking experience - Intellectual curiosity and a willingness to master new technologies. - Transparency, honesty, and a no-ego mindset. Pluses - Knowledge of Envoy and Cilium - Cryptography engineering experience Interview Process We’ve designed a unique interview process that gives you the opportunity to learn about the company and collaborate with our engineering team on a project. Candidates who enjoy the process often stay with Teleport for a long time. What to expect once you apply: 1. Zoom meeting with a Teleport recruiter You’ll learn about the company, our products, compensation philosophy, interview process, and key requirements. 2. Zoom meeting with the Hiring Manager The Hiring Manager will walk you through the coding challenge and answer your questions. 3. Coding challenge collaboration The day after your meeting with the Hiring Manager, you join a Slack channel and submit a coding challenge in Go https://github.com/gravitational/careers/blob/main/challenges/systems/challenge-1.md using GitHub. #LT-LT1 The Benefits While many companies flaunt their benefits and perks to convince you to join their company, we believe your career is more important than that. That’s why we focus on making your day-to-day the best it can be while empowering you to achieve your goals and aspirations. What does that mean? - It means you’ll have the autonomy to make your own decisions and focus on what’s important to you and your role. - It means having access to a senior team that supports you and wants to see you succeed. - You’ll have a smart team you can learn from, collaborate with, and grow with. - It means being able to make an impact and have a voice in the future of the feature, product or company direction. We don’t just leave you to focus on a niche. We allow you to spread your wings and take advantage of opportunities, challenging projects and exciting problems. - It means removing the bureaucracy and red tape that stifles innovation while giving you access to all the information you need to build and take action more quickly. - It means allowing you to have the career you’ve always wanted today, rather than having to “earn your stripes” and wait for the right moment. If you’re good enough, you’re good enough. But we don’t stop there. In addition to the career opportunities at Teleport, we offer a whole range of benefits that help you to maximize your future, including: - Extensive health coverage - Annual expense budget - Rest & recovery policies that maximize leave and your ability to recharge - Investment in your future with retirement savings plans - Equity in a US $1.1-bn business - Professional development opportunities Do you have what it takes? Get to use (and know) Teleport through our unique interview process At Teleport, we do things a bit differently. And when we say we only hire top talent, we actually mean it. Because of this, our interview process is different too - and we’re proud of it. We let your work do the talking. We don’t go in for six rounds of interviews, live whiteboard or live-coding. We don’t hire people that can talk a good game. We only want the best. And for that, we need to see what you can do, in your own time, in your own way. For real. But interviews are a two-way street. Through the project, you’ll get a real taste of life at Teleport, including: - We’re flexible - you’ll have plenty of time to complete your project, if life gets in the way, that’s ok. We can - work around you. - We give you autonomy - you’ll have the space and freedom to figure things out, make decisions, and problem-solve. - We’re collaborative - Got questions? - We have answers. You’ll have support from your team - the one you’ll be working with day in day out if you’re successful in getting the role. - We progress careers - During the project, see how much you learn. That’s what working at Teleport is like. We like learning, on the job. All-the-time. - We can move fast (if you can) - two weeks sound like a long time? No problem? Early submissions are fine, and we’ll keep the process moving. Think you’ve got what it takes? We’d love to see it! Unconvinced? We can guarantee three things: - It’ll challenge you. - You'll learn a lot. - If you love the process, you'll love working at Teleport. Teleport is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any classifications protected by federal, state, or local law. Candidate Privacy Notice: For information about our collection and processing of job applicant personal data for this position, please see our Job Applicant Privacy Policy and Notice of Collection at https://goteleport.com/legal/apply/job-applicant/