Software Engineer III/Senior, Data Platform

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 Data Platform Team The Data Platform team owns the data platform and analytics systems that power decision-making across ngrok. We handle ingestion, modeling, metrics, and reporting-the systems that make sure every event is counted correctly and every number in a deck can be defended. We manage about 500TiB of data, run a dagster instance with over 1,600 assets, maintain 550+ dbt models, and own Flink streaming pipelines that process ~22,000 messages per second on average. This data is used across all teams @ ngrok, from marketing to financial reporting. Our systems must be correct, explainable, and resilient under real-world conditions: traffic spikes, schema changes, late-arriving events, and other challenges that come from running a large, globally distributed system. We treat data as a product: reliable, observable, well-modeled, and thoughtfully designed. Our Data Platform team is part of the Engineering organization and doesn’t live in a silo. What You’ll Actually Do Build the data backbone : You’ll design and evolve the pipelines and orchestration systems that move data across ngrok - from product events to financial reporting. Ingestion, transformation, modeling, reliability. The foundation everything else depends on. Make the numbers make sense : You’ll own core business and product datasets - usage, revenue, growth, performance-and ensure they’re accurate, reconciled, and trusted. No mystery metrics. No “why doesn’t this match?” Slack threads. Turn raw events into decision-ready insight : You’ll build and refine the models that power dashboards, planning, forecasting, and experimentation. Clean schemas. Durable definitions. Metrics people actually align on. Raise the bar on data reliability : You’ll implement validation, testing, observability, and monitoring across our data systems. Pipelines shouldn’t silently fail. Dashboards shouldn’t drift. Finance shouldn’t find surprises. Own the platform as it scales : You’ll improve performance, cost efficiency, and architectural design across our data stack (Airbyte, Dagster, dbt, Athena, Flink, Superset, and beyond). As traffic and customers grow, the data platform keeps up. Partner across the company : You’ll work closely with Product, Engineering, GTM, Finance, and Leadership. They’ll have hard questions. You’ll build the systems that make those answers obvious. You Might Be a Great Fit If… You’re familiar with Python, SQL, and Scala You’re also comfortable in a language such as Go, Rust, C++, or Java (with bonus points for Go) You’re comfortable writing production-quality code and treating data systems like real software-not just queries in a notebook You’re interested in AWS infrastructure and Kubernetes, managed through Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar) — not click ops You’ve built and operated large-scale event streams, product telemetry, or high-volume ingestion pipelines in production You enjoy thinking about data models, invariants, lineage, and failure modes You care about data quality and observability, and you design systems that make errors visible-not silent You’re the person people ping when the numbers don’t add up-and you actually enjoy figuring out why Extra credit if you’ve worked on: Usage-based billing, metering, revenue, or financial reporting systems Event-driven or streaming data architectures Customer-facing dashboards or internal executive reporting 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. We self host a large part of our data stack on Kubernetes, namely dagster, Superset, Airbyte, and Flink. Our core data warehouse is in Athena, with the data being stored as Apache Iceberg. We also run some workloads on our Clickhouse Cloud infrastructure. Our data codebase is a mix of Python and Scala 3. We use dbt for SQL modeling. All data tools are fully integrated with the rest of our developer platform. The ngrok 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.