About the Role
As a Staff Software Engineer at Obsidian, you will own meaningful product and platform work across Obsidian's engineering stack, with scope extending beyond a single team. This generalist role requires the ability to move between backend services, data flows, APIs, product features, integrations, and production systems. You will work on systems that help customers understand activity, risk, and threats across their SaaS environments, turning ambiguity into architecture, multi-team plans, and working software. You will be comfortable being the person others look to when the technical path forward is unclear.
Responsibilities
- Own features and system architecture from problem definition through production, at a scope spanning multiple teams or the broader platform
- Design and build backend services, APIs, data processing workflows, integrations, and product-facing capabilities
- Set technical direction and architectural standards that other engineers and teams build against
- Work with product managers, designers, security researchers, and engineers to turn customer needs into shipped software
- Improve the performance, reliability, scalability, and observability of existing systems, and identify systemic risks before they become incidents
- Make practical technical decisions with organization-wide impact and explain the tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Raise engineering standards through code reviews, design discussions, mentoring senior and mid-level engineers, and documentation
- Debug the hardest production issues and drive teams to durable fixes, not just short-term patches
- Use AI-powered tools effectively while maintaining high standards for correctness, security, and maintainability
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in a software engineering role, with a track record of increasing technical scope and impact
- Strong ability to reason about system design, performance, reliability, security, and operational tradeoffs across multiple systems and teams
- Experience setting technical direction and leading complex, cross-team technical initiatives without needing formal authority
- Strong communication skills in code reviews, design discussions, and cross-functional planning, including with senior stakeholders
- Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, including cost, reliability, and architecture tradeoffs
- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes
- Experience with event-driven or streaming systems such as Kafka, Redis, or similar technologies
- Deep understanding of relational databases such as Postgres, including performance and scaling tradeoffs
- Leverage AI tools effectively to improve development efficiency and build AI-ready systems
- Critically evaluate, test, and refine AI-generated outputs before they reach production
- Understand core AI/ML concepts such as LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, inference, and evaluation
- Experience integrating AI/ML APIs or building systems that support AI-driven product workflows
- Ensure quality, observability, reliability, security, and performance in systems that use or support AI capabilities
- Help establish org-wide norms and best practices for AI-assisted engineering
Skills
- Python
- Go
- TypeScript
- SQL
- Postgres
- AWS
- GCP
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Kafka
- Redis
- Grafana
- Prometheus
- GitLab CI/CD
- AI-Native Engineering
Experience Level
- Staff
- Principal
Salary/Compensations
- $169,000—$192,000 USD
Benefits
- Competitive compensation with equity and 401k
- Comprehensive healthcare with dental and vision coverage
- Flexible paid time off and paid holiday time off
- 12 weeks of new parent or family leave
- Personal and professional development resources
About the Company
- Obsidian Security is the leading SaaS security platform, trusted by global enterprises like Snowflake, T-Mobile, and Algolia.
- We protect 200+ organizations across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, including many of the world’s largest Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies.
- Founded in 2017 and backed by top investors like Greylock, Obsidian was built to close a critical gap: securing SaaS apps where business happens—Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and hundreds more.
- The company does this by offering a complete SaaS security platform to reduce risk, detect and respond to threats, and prevent breaches at the source.
- Obsidian was built by leaders who redefined endpoint and identity security at CrowdStrike, Okta, Cylance, and Carbon Black.
- With AI driving rapid SaaS growth and complexity, agentic AI tools gain privileged access to sensitive data through integrations, creating new risks most security tools miss.
- Obsidian uniquely detects anomalous OAuth token activity and manages integration risks.
- Recognizing that SaaS security needs to evolve, Obsidian enables growing organizations to start with a lightweight, prevention-focused browser extension and expand coverage over time.
- With global momentum, a growing partner ecosystem including SentinelOne, Databricks, and Google Cloud, and a major fundraise ahead, Obsidian is scaling rapidly toward long-term growth and IPO readiness.
Equal Opportunity
- At Obsidian, we are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer.
- We value diversity and hire for talent, passion, and compassion.
- In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to submit satisfactory proof of identity and legal authorization.
- If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact accommodations@obsidiansecurity.com
- Information collected and processed as part of any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Obsidian’s Applicant Privacy Policy.
