Software Engineer III/Senior, Agent

About ngrok Inc. ngrok is an all-in-one cloud networking platform that secures, transforms, and routes traffic to services running anywhere. Instead of cobbling together nginx, NLBs, VPNs, model routers, and oodles of other tools, developers solve every networking problem with one gateway. Doesn’t matter if they’re sharing localhost or running AI workloads in production. We're trusted by more than 9 million developers at companies like GitHub, Okta, HashiCorp, and Twilio. What started as a way to put your local app on a public URL has grown into a universal gateway for API delivery, AI inference, device fleets, and site-to-site connectivity. It’s the same ngrok that millions of developers have loved and leaned on every day for years, now with the power to run production traffic at scale. A few things you should know: We are obsessed with our pets, Viper sunglasses and Bufo (yes, the toad) We have a designated Chief Emoji Officer - they are vital to our success! We like software that’s serious and culture that’s not Still reading? Good. There's more below worth your time. About the Agent Team Our Agent team builds the software that sits at the edge of every ngrok connection. The Agent is what developers install, run, embed, and trust to expose their systems securely to the internet. It’s the first thing customers touch and the last thing we want to debug at 3am. The Agent must be fast, correct, and predictable under hostile conditions: flaky networks, broken configs, expired certs, overloaded laptops, CI environments held together by duct tape, and production traffic that does not care about your feelings. When it works, nobody thinks about it. When it doesn’t, it’s immediately obvious — and very public. What You’ll Actually Do Build and evolve the ngrok Agent itself : You’ll work on the core agent that handles connection management, tunneling, authentication, and secure traffic forwarding. This is a high-performance networking system that must behave correctly across a wide range of environments and failure modes. Own reliability at the edge : You’ll design for latency, throughput, and correctness under real-world chaos—network partitions, transient failures, misconfiguration, and resource-constrained machines. When something goes wrong, the Agent should fail clearly, safely, and explainably. Develop SDKs and embeddable integrations : You’ll build and maintain SDKs and embedded agent components that other systems and products depend on. These need to be easy to integrate, hard to misuse, and stable over time. Make the system observable : You’ll improve diagnostics, logging, and metrics so we can understand what the Agent is doing in the wild. When customers ask “what happened?”, you’ll help make sure we can answer with facts instead of guesses. Ship software that runs everywhere : The Agent runs on developer laptops, servers, CI systems, containers, and occasionally very questionable hardware. You’ll ensure it behaves consistently across platforms and environments. Work with people who care about correctness : You’ll collaborate closely with product, platform, and support teams. When something breaks, you’ll help explain why. When something is confusing, you’ll help make it boring. You Might Be a Great Fit If… You’ve built systems-level software that had to work under pressure You’re comfortable in Go, Rust, C/C++, or Java (bonus points for Go) You enjoy debugging things that “shouldn’t be possible” You think deeply about reliability, security, and performance You can reason about tradeoffs and explain them like a normal human You care about developer experience — not just correctness Extra credit if you’ve worked on: Networking, proxies, or agents SDKs or embeddable runtimes Observability tooling Open-source systems people actually use Tech Stack ngrok runs entirely on AWS. Engineers develop by using remote development tools and/or ssh to connect to remote EC2 environments that run a full Kubernetes cluster of the ngrok stack, closely mirroring production. The codebase is primarily Go and TypeScript. We use Postgres for persistence, Kafka for streaming, Protobuf for service boundaries, and Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, and Buildkite to operate and ship reliably. React is used for user interfaces, and GitHub supports our development workflows and remembers everything. Location This is a remote position for candidates outside of the Bay Area and a hybrid role for candidates within commuting distance to San Francisco. Our Bay Area employees commute to the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sponsorship All candidates must be US-based, and legally authorized to work in the United States. At this time, ngrok is unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a permanent, ongoing basis without the need for current or future sponsorship. Compensation bout the Admin Team Our Admin Engineering team builds the systems that decide who can access ngrok, what they can do, and how everything is configured. We own identity, access control, and configuration at scale—users, certificates, service accounts, domains, policies. If it answers “who can do what?”, it’s our problem. When things work, nobody notices. When they don’t, people get locked out or something gets exposed that really shouldn’t be. A lot of this work lives in the tension between power and safety. Customers want full control and APIs for everything. They also want guardrails and sane defaults. You’ll build systems that manage both—without making either side miserable. What You’ll Actually Do Build the control plane Design and operate the services and APIs behind admin workflows—the layer that defines how ngrok behaves in production. Own identity and access Develop and evolve IAM/RBAC systems across users, certificates, and service accounts. If something can authenticate or authorize, you’ll touch it. Make configuration scale Build global configuration systems for domains, policies, and traffic behavior—flexible enough for automation, safe enough for humans. Make debugging possible Improve observability across admin workflows so we can answer “what changed?” without guessing or digging through logs for an hour. Ship systems people rely on Work with product and platform teams to deliver features that are stable, understandable, and actually usable in production. Keep things from breaking (or worse) Ensure admin systems stay scalable, reliable, and hard to misuse—because mistakes here tend to be very visible. You Might Be a Great Fit If… You’ve built backend systems that needed to be correct and hard to misuse You’re comfortable in Go, Rust, Java, or C/C++ You understand APIs, distributed systems, and why auth is never “just add auth” You take ownership, especially when things get weird Extra credit if you’ve worked on: Admin platforms, IAM, or enterprise SaaS Certificates, identity systems, or observability Systems where flexibility vs. safety is a constant fight Tech Stack ngrok runs entirely on AWS. Engineers develop by using remote development tools and/or ssh to connect to remote EC2 environments that run a full Kubernetes cluster of the ngrok stack, closely mirroring production. The codebase is primarily Go and TypeScript. We use Postgres for persistence, Kafka for streaming, Protobuf for service boundaries, and Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, and Buildkite to operate and ship reliably. React is used for user interfaces, and GitHub supports our development workflows and remembers everything. Location This is a remote position for candidates outside of the Bay Area and a hybrid role for candidates within commuting distance to San Francisco. Our Bay Area employees commute to the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sponsorship All candidates must be US-based, and legally authorized to work in the United States. At this time, ngrok is unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a permanent, ongoing basis without the need for current or future sponsorship. Compensation Senior Software Engineer Tier 1 (SF, LA, Seattle, NYC): $202,500 – $247,500 Tier 2 (rest of US): $$186,300 – $227,700 Software Engineer III Tier 1 (SF, LA, Seattle, NYC): $180,000 – $220,000 Tier 2 (rest of US): $165,500 – $202,400 Job level and actual compensation will be evaluated based on factors including, but not limited to, qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), internal equity with other team members, market data, and specific work location. We provide an attractive mix of salary and equity. #LI-Remote Full Time Employee Benefits Health stuff that actually matters. Full premiums covered on base healthcare, dental, and vision for you. Half covered for your dependents. Mental health and well-being support included, because taking care of your brain is as important as taking care of your teeth. Retirement matching that doesn't suck. 401(k) with 100% match up to 3% of your salary and 50% match up to another 2%. Future you will appreciate present you. Actually flexible time off. We say "open, flexible vacation policy" and actually mean it. Take the time you need. Your manager will bug you if you're not taking enough. Parental leave that's realistic. Up to 16 weeks if you give birth, up to 8 weeks for new parents (birth, adoption, fostering—however your family grows). Money to keep growing. Annual professional development budget for books, courses, conferences, or whatever helps you level up. Plus an annual home office/desk stipend to make your workspace not terrible. Work from wherever. Co-working space stipend if you want to get out of your house but aren't near our SF office. Lunch on us. 2x+ per week for employees onsite at our San Francisco office. Free food tastes better. Company offsites. Twice a year we get the whole team together. It's part strategy, part bonding, part excuse to hang out with Bufo (the toad). Regular feedback and fair compensation. Bi-annual reviews to make sure you're getting real feedback and staying competitively compensated. No surprises, no waiting around for performance conversations.