--- title: 'Distributed Systems Engineer at Arcade' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/distributed-systems-engineer-arcade-san-francisco-zwwvrfp8emcb' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-06' --- # Distributed Systems Engineer at Arcade - **Company:** Arcade - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $200k–$300k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-05-13 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/arcadeai/0c8e843d-f390-4993-87ee-daad8a8edff2 ## Job description Everyone's building AI agents, but almost nobody gets them to production. Building an impressive demo is easy. Building an AI agent that can securely take action inside enterprise systems is hard. The moment an agent accesses customer data, executes a workflow, or makes changes on behalf of a user, authorization, governance, and trust become the real engineering challenge. Arcade is the MCP runtime that gives agents the power to do both seamlessly. We connect agents to the systems they act in, then give each one a permission slip and a paper trail - proof of what it's allowed to do, and a record of what it did. That's what makes AI safe to turn loose: real actions, on real systems, already shipping inside Fortune 100 companies. ## THE REVOLUTION NEEDS YOU Every AI app needs agentic tools that let AI models take real actions. Without tools, AI can only chat. With tools, AI can actually do things. We're building the definitive tools catalog, actions platform, and governance model that will unlock AI's true potential. Think Zapier for AI Actions. Think Auth0 for AI. Think really big. WHY THIS IS THE OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME - Traction: Real deployments with Fortune-100 customers like Morgan Stanley and Open Table - Founder-Market Fit: Our CEO previously founded Stormpath (acquired by Okta), where he created the first Authentication API for developers. He's done this before - and this time the market is 10x bigger. Our CTO led the vector database team at Redis, shipped 100+ LLM applications, and is a contributor to LangChain and LlamaIndex. He knows this space better than anyone. - Dream Team: We've assembled authentication, integrations, distributed systems, and AI experts from Okta, Redis, Microsoft, Splunk, Ngrok, Google, Airbyte, Disney, and HPE who've built and founded multiple successful developer platforms. - Perfect Timing: Every enterprise is racing to put agents in production - almost none get there. The problem isn't better models, it's proving which agent can take which action, on behalf of which user, against which system. That's us. - Massive Market : We're building critical infrastructure for the biggest technological shift of our generation. Every AI app will need what we're building. - Backed By The Best: Our Series A round is led by SYN Ventures, with strategic investment from Morgan Stanley and Wipro. Our earlier investors have also backed Databricks, Clickhouse, MongoDB, Perplexity, Cohere, ScaleAI, Confluent, Elastic, and Firebase. They see what we see - this is going to be huge. The Challenge We are building the runtime and registry for AI/LLM tools.  You will define both how AI interacts with the world, and how humans build and manage those tools. This includes creating production-grade integrations, and the services & toolkits that run them... and the solving the unique problems of AI/LLM usage along the way. We are playing on hard-mode: building governance, PaaS, and infrastructure for both on-prem and SaaS deployments at the same time. This role is primarily focused on our back-end services, but as an early member of a startup, you’ll be working up-and-down the stack.  We build our software with Go, Python, and Typescript, and expect you to be a pro in at least one of those. We are looking for people who constantly ship and don't get stuck - we are looking for folks who are always learning and and able to apply that knowledge to their work and teach it to the team. ## What You'll Do - Build the infrastructure to manage the backplane for all future AI tools - Design, build, test, and deploy high-performance, secure, production-grade software. - Develop SDKs and frameworks that make it easy for other developers to build custom tools - Help set industry standards for tool calling and authorization (for example, we helped write the MCP authorization spec) - Create integrations with major platforms and LLMs (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, OpenAi, Anthropic, etc.) - Shape the roadmap for the team - Build leverage (via AI) - projects that take a week today should take a day next time. - Share your work with our customers and community, building our (and your) brand. Required Skills - An insatiable desire to ship. - 7+ years of software engineering experience comprising of: - 5+ years of backend development experience with either Python, Go, Ruby, Typescript, or a similar language and API & Web frameworks. - 2+ years of experience with infrastructure and deployment (AWS/GCP, Terraform, Helm, etc) - Strong experience building and maintaining production APIs. - Track record of writing clean, well-documented, well-tested code. - User-centered approach to designing developer-centric products and tools. Bonus Points - Experience building developer tools or SDKs - Familiarity with LLMs and AI frameworks (Langchain, LlamaIndex, etc) - Open-source contributions - Experience with high-scale distributed systems - Experience leading teams and mentoring more junior developers - Familiarity with Typescript and a relevant frontend framework (e.g. React) - You’ve been a startup founder or early-state startup employee before and love it Join The Movement We're not just building a product - we're leading a movement to transform AI from just chatbots to agents that can take actions against real systems. This is your chance to be at the forefront of that revolution. If you want to look back in 5 years and say, "I helped build that", then we want to talk to you. Ready to make AI actually useful? Apply Now ## Compensation and Benefits This role offers a competitive salary, equity, and benefits. Compensation is aligned with the range below and determined based on a candidate's background, experience, and performance. $200,000-$260,000 USD Notes: - This is an in-person role located in our San Francisco (SOMA) office. ## About Arcade ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Arcade provides a runtime for secure authorization, reliable tool execution, and centralized lifecycle governance for multi-user AI agents. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series A) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Sam Partee (Co-Founder), Alex Salazar (Co-Founder CEO) ## Core Business - **Primary Industry**: AI Agent Infrastructure / Secure Agent Authorization - **Target Customers**: B2B, Enterprise, AI Engineering Teams — companies building multi-user AI agents that need production-grade authorization, tool reliability, and governance. - **Mission Statement**: To deliver the runtime that lets teams deploy multi-user AI agents that take actions across any system with granular permissions and complete visibility — no complex infrastructure required. ## Products & Services - **Arcade Runtime**: The core platform handling agent authorization, tool execution, and lifecycle governance in one layer. - *Type*: SaaS (Cloud, BYO Cloud, Self-Managed, Air-Gapped) - **Agent Authorization**: Per-action, multi-user authorization evaluated at runtime (intersection of what the agent is allowed to do AND what the user is allowed to do). Integrates with existing OAuth/IDP flows and manages full token lifecycle. - *Type*: Cloud / Infrastructure Service - **Agent-Optimized Tools**: 7,500+ MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools across 81 MCP servers for systems like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Jira, Slack, Google Workspace, GitHub, and more. Designed to translate natural language intent into precise API calls with parallelized execution, automatic failover, and intelligent retries. - *Type*: API / Integration Catalog - **Agent Lifecycle Governance**: Centralized control plane for all tools and agents — shared discovery, version control, fine-grained audit logs (OpenTelemetry-compatible), and visibility filtering. - *Type*: Management Dashboard / Control Plane - **MCP Gateway**: Federates MCP servers (Arcade-hosted, custom, or third-party) into a single endpoint. - *Type*: API Gateway - **Open Source SDK for Custom Tools**: A framework to build custom MCP servers in Python with built-in OAuth and secrets management. - *Type*: Open Source SDK ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not disclosed. Raised $12M seed (April 2025, led by Laude Ventures) and $60M Series A (June 2026). [arcade.dev](https://www.arcade.dev/blog/arcade-series-a/) - **Key Metric**: Total Funding of $72M ($12M Seed + $60M Series A) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Laude Ventures (lead seed); Series A investors not fully disclosed but listed alongside partners like Lithic (partnership for e-commerce agents). - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew from ~28 to 28 (data conflicting but shows strong early growth — +106.7% YoY as of mid-2025, with +6.9% monthly) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/arcade-ai) - Expanded from 7,000+ to 7,500+ integrations in under a year - SOC 2 compliant, with deployment options covering air-gapped and classified environments - Active partnership with Lithic for e-commerce agents [businesswire.com](Business Wire) - Featured in WSJ and Crunchbase News on AI agent trends ## Competitive Advantages - **Single Runtime for Authorization, Execution, and Governance**: Unlike fragmented tooling (separate auth, tool servers, and observability), Arcade provides one integrated layer that handles all three, dramatically reducing infrastructure complexity. - **Multi-User, Per-Action Authorization at Runtime**: Enforces access at the intersection of what the agent is allowed to do AND what the user is allowed to do — not a service account or shared token. This is a key differentiator for enterprise security. - **Token Lifecycle Isolation**: Credentials (OAuth tokens, API keys) are kept inside the runtime and never exposed to the LLM or MCP client, preventing credential leakage. - **7,500+ Pre-Built, Agent-Optimized Tools**: Tools are built for agentic actions (not just API wrappers), reducing hallucination and token cost. - **Flexible Deployment**: Cloud, BYO Cloud, self-managed (on-premises), and air-gapped — allowing use in highly regulated and classified environments. ## Strategic Focus - **Scale Enterprise Adoption**: The Series A raise signals intent to ramp go-to-market for large enterprise deals and expand platform capabilities for compliance-heavy verticals. - **Expand Integration Ecosystem**: Continuing to add agent-optimized tools across more business systems (ERPs, CRMs, HRIS, ITSM). - **Deepen Governance Capabilities**: Centralizing agent lifecycle governance with shared registries, version control, and OpenTelemetry audit logs to meet enterprise compliance requirements (SOC 2, RBAC, SSO). - **Strengthen Ecosystem Partnerships**: Partnerships like Lithic and integrations with frameworks (LangChain, OpenAI Agents, CrewAI, Vercel AI, Google ADK, Mastra) are key distribution channels. ## Why Work Here - **High-Impact, Early-Stage Environment**: As a 2024-founded company that just raised $60M Series A (2026), Arcade is in a hyper-growth phase — one of the hottest segments in AI infrastructure. - **Strong Engineering-Led Culture**: Engineering makes up ~45% of headcount. The technical team has deep backgrounds in AI infrastructure, cloud security, and OAuth systems. - **Flexible Work Policy**: Based in San Francisco with hybrid/remote-friendly signals (team spread across US, Brazil, Canada). - **Mission-Driven Problem**: Solving one of the hardest problems in production AI agents — security and governance — with a product that is genuinely novel. - **Active Hiring**: 8 open positions as of mid-2026, including Founding Enterprise Account Executive, Applied AI Engineer, Lead Software Engineer - Growth, Product Designer, Forward Deployed Engineer, and Product Marketing Manager. [arcadeai jobs](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/arcadeai) - **Growth Trajectory**: Headcount grew over 100% in the first year post-launch. The company is being watched by top VCs and mentioned in WSJ and Crunchbase. - **Perks & Culture**: Not fully detailed, but the team values autonomy, high ownership (startup), and solving ambiguous problems at the intersection of AI and security. ## Sources 1. [arcade.dev](https://www.arcade.dev/) 2. [arcade.dev/product](https://www.arcade.dev/product/) 3. [docs.arcade.dev](https://docs.arcade.dev/en/home) 4. [arcade.dev blog - Series A](https://www.arcade.dev/blog/arcade-series-a/) 5. [linkedin.com/company/arcade-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/arcade-ai) 6. [Business Wire - Lithic Partnership](https://www.businesswire.com) 7. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/arcadeai](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/arcadeai) ## Other roles at Arcade - [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-arcade-austin-e48rc1w4eya7) — Austin, TX - [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-arcade-san-francisco-wsyd3vxnje2s) — San Francisco, CA - [Head of Support Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-support-engineering-arcade-san-francisco-rqxg1kg973ps) — San Francisco, CA - [AI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-engineer-arcade-san-francisco-7mn4q2t7sqcw) — San Francisco, CA - [Enterprise Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-arcade-new-york-wf9y0fahkmjx) — New York, NY - [Distributed Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/distributed-systems-engineer-rtb-house-warsaw-masovian-voivodeship-hf8w4pahfbjb) — Warsaw Masovian Voivodeship, Poland - [Distributed Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/distributed-systems-engineer-fluidstack-san-francisco-cfjrjfew1kzg) — San Francisco, CA - [Distributed Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/distributed-systems-engineer-moment-new-york-3pdzpy1jjkr8) — New York, NY - [Distributed Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/distributed-systems-engineer-archil-san-francisco-21jft0ra16pn) — San Francisco, CA - [Distributed Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/distributed-systems-engineer-ritual-remote-vazsha5dzr20)