Senior Software Engineer (Go Backend, AI)

Location: Hybrid role based in Arlington, VA, United States

Base salary: $160,000–$225,000 per year, plus eligible performance bonuses and stock options.

Company

hirify.global is an AI and optimization company building advanced software for complex operational environments, including real-time communications, computer vision, audio intelligence, natural language processing, navigation, geospatial data, optimization, and secure cloud infrastructure.

What you will do

• Design, build, and operate production backend services primarily in Go.
• Architect distributed systems for reliability, scalability, low latency, observability, security, and failure recovery.
• Define APIs, service boundaries, event flows, data models, persistence strategies, and communication contracts.
• Build event-driven systems with Kafka and real-time communications infrastructure using WebRTC and LiveKit.
• Integrate backend systems with AI/ML, computer vision, audio, NLP, navigation, and geospatial applications.
• Diagnose complex production issues, design testing strategies, participate in architecture reviews, and mentor engineers.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience focused on backend, platform, or distributed systems.
• Strong production experience with Go and distributed services.
• Strong understanding of concurrency, networking, APIs, service boundaries, fault tolerance, and distributed-system fundamentals.
• Experience with relational databases, schema design, domain modeling, production data-access patterns, authentication, authorization, and RBAC or similar access-control models.
• Experience deploying and operating cloud-based systems on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Strong debugging and performance-analysis skills, plus experience with automated testing, code review, and production engineering practices.
• Ability to explain technical architecture and engineering tradeoffs clearly.
• Legally authorized to work in the United States.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.

Nice to have

• Apache Kafka, stream processing, event-driven systems, message queues, WebRTC, LiveKit, or real-time audio/video experience.
• Production experience with Rust, gRPC, WebSockets, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, CI/CD, or modern cloud infrastructure.
• Experience building AI/ML, computer vision, audio-processing, NLP, geospatial, real-time collaboration, or communications platforms.
• Experience with distributed tracing, metrics, structured logging, observability, encryption, audit logging, secrets management, and least-privilege security.
• Experience in defense, government, public safety, regulated, or high-security environments; active or previously held U.S. government security clearance.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work in Arlington, VA, with a flexible work environment.
• Direct ownership of architecture, implementation, and production systems, with influence over product and technical direction.
• Collaborative work across AI/ML, distributed systems, computer vision, audio, navigation, optimization, and real-time infrastructure.
• Health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Performance bonus opportunities and stock options.