• Strong Python and hands-on API design experience, in production, not just in personal projects.
• Real understanding of desktop and network topology: how clients, servers, and the network between them actually behave, and how to debug across that boundary.
• Charisma. This role talks to customers and leadership directly. You need to be someone people want in the room, who can make a technical tradeoff land with a non-technical audience.
• Early-stage startup experience, seed to Series A, is highly regarded. We want someone who has already lived through the ambiguity, not someone who's curious what it's like.
• Curiosity as a default setting, not a talking point. We'll notice the difference fast.
• Comfort operating without a product engineering team around you. You're not joining a function, you're closer to starting one.
• Security or reverse-engineering background: comfort poking at a system from the outside in.
• Experience in a company where you were one of the first engineers, not just an early hire.
• A track record of building internal tools you weren't asked to build, because they made your own work faster.
• Fully remote, async-first by necessity given the time zone spread. Small enough that your decisions ship the same week you make them, and small enough that a bad decision is expensive. We'd rather you say "I don't know yet, give me two days" than guess confidently.