
Senior Software Engineer, Backend at Bluesky (Remote)
Role details
Job description
Bluesky's mission is to transition the social web from platforms to protocols. We're building a federated social network where users have more power. Our team has decades of combined experience building distributed applications. As a backend dev, you'll build data infrastructure that powers Bluesky’s developer services and will be a critical part of transforming social media.
Working on our AT Protocol-oriented services, you’ll be building and maintaining systems running on dense, latest-generation, bare-metal servers running in our own racks serving hundreds of thousands of events per second.
Responsibilities:
- Scale our Go production services to hundreds of millions of users
- Build mission critical data infrastructure that powers much of the AT Protocol ecosystem
- Build services that scale across tens of terabytes of RAM, thousands of CPU cores, and petabytes of NVME storage
You might be a good fit if you:
- Have strong fundamental programming and software engineering skills
- Have extensive experience with Go (e.g. 3+ years)
- Have built scalable backend systems (1M+ ops/sec) (e.g. data services, load balancers, etc.)
- Have familiarity with the upper limits of operating systems, networks, and storage.
- Have significant experience with database systems (e.g. Postgres, MySQL, SQLite)
- Have some experience with with other data stores (e.g. Scylla/Cassandra, Redis, ClickHouse)
- Have a high bar for ownership and operation of production services.
- Like working on small, fast-moving teams
- Have read the AT Protocol docs and want to contribute
We're especially excited if you have:
- Previous experience working on social or Internet infrastructure at large scale
We're a fully remote team, though a significant overlap of working hours with US/Pacific is required. For full-time roles, we offer health, dental, and vision insurance.
To learn more about us, check out:
- bsky.social
- atproto.com Please attach your resume and links to your GitHub, GitLab, or a portfolio of past work within the same attachment.
The anticipated base salary range for this position is $179,000 - $220,000, excluding equity. Equity will be considered in the total compensation package. The final base salary for this role will be based on the individual’s geographic location, as well as experience level, skill set, training, licenses and certifications.
Why work at Bluesky
- Remote-first culture: The company is fully remote but expects some overlap with Pacific Time (PST). Employees are distributed across 12+ countries, including the US, Philippines, Japan, UK, and Germany.
- Small, nimble team: With ~42 employees, new hires can have significant impact on core product and protocol decisions. The engineering team is ~15 people.
- Open-source ethos: Engineers work on open-source code (AT Protocol, app clients, moderation tools) that is visible to the public. This is a strong draw for developers who value transparency and community contribution.
- Mission-driven: Employees are building a social network that is designed to be resilient to corporate takeover and censorship, which resonates with many candidates.
- Notable perks: While not detailed publicly, the company offers the flexibility of remote work, equity in a rapidly growing startup, and the opportunity to shape the future of decentralized social media.
- Recent leadership: Jay Graber (CEO/Innovation Officer), Paul Frazee (CTO), Rose Wang (COO) are hands-on leaders with deep backgrounds in decentralized tech and product development.