Senior Software Engineer

About ngrok Inc.

ngrok is an all-in-one cloud networking platform that secures, transforms, and routes traffic to services running anywhere. Instead of cobbling together nginx, NLBs, VPNs, model routers, and oodles of other tools, developers solve every networking problem with one gateway. Doesn’t matter if they’re sharing localhost or running AI workloads in production.

We're trusted by more than 9 million developers at companies like GitHub, Okta, HashiCorp, and Twilio. What started as a way to put your local app on a public URL has grown into a universal gateway for API delivery, AI inference, device fleets, and site‑to‑site connectivity. It’s the same ngrok that millions of developers have loved and leaned on every day for years, now with the power to run production traffic at scale.

A few things you should know:

• We are obsessed with our pets, Viper sunglasses and Bufo (yes, the toad)
• We have a designated Chief Emoji Officer – they are vital to our success!
• We like software that’s serious and culture that’s not

About the Gateway Team

We own ngrok’s core gateway layer — the infrastructure that sits between the internet and everything our customers run. Every request, response, retry, and timeout passes through here.

Our job is to make sure that traffic is:

• Routed exactly where it’s supposed to go
• Secured correctly, every time
• Allowed or blocked for reasons we can explain
• Rate‑limited and shaped without surprises
• Observable when something inevitably goes sideways

What You’ll Actually Do

• Build and operate the gateway core: work on the services every ngrok request passes through. They’re very fast, very hot, and have extremely high standards.
• Design routing and security primitives everyone depends on: build low‑level policy, routing, and validation systems used across the platform—making sure bad configs fail fast and don’t accidentally DDoS the internet.
• Debug distributed systems in the wild: chase bugs caused by timing, load, and incorrect assumptions. Expect metrics, traces, packet captures, and the occasional “how is this even possible?”
• Ship infrastructure people sleep on (in a good way): build simple, durable systems and clean abstractions that other teams rely on daily—while thinking about blast radius, safety, and rollbacks more than flashy demos.

You Might Be a Great Fit If…

• You’re comfortable in Go, Rust, C/C++, or Java (bonus points for Go)
• You’ve built networking, proxy, or infrastructure systems in production
• You understand TLS/mTLS
• You enjoy systems that are invisible until they’re not
• You’re passionate about building primitives other teams depend on
• You’ve said “this needs to be rock solid” and meant it literally

Extra credit if you’ve worked on:

• Gateways, proxies, or edge platforms
• Security‑critical infrastructure
• Multi‑tenant networking systems
• Config‑heavy systems that must never surprise users
• Anything described as “simple” in the original proposal

Tech Stack

• AWS for all infrastructure
• Remote EC2 environments with a full Kubernetes cluster mirroring production
• Primary codebase: Go and TypeScript
• Persistence: Postgres
• Streaming: Kafka
• Service boundaries: Protobuf
• Operations: Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, Buildkite
• UI: React
• Development workflow: GitHub

Location

• Remote position for candidates outside of the Bay Area
• Hybrid role for candidates within commuting distance to San Francisco (office attendance on Tuesdays and Wednesdays)

Sponsorship

• All candidates must be US‑based and legally authorized to work in the United States.
• ngrok is unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position.

Compensation

Senior Software Engineer

• Tier 1 (SF, LA, Seattle, NYC): $180,000 – $225,000
• Tier 2 (rest of US): $165,600 – $207,000

Software Engineer III

• Tier 1 (SF, LA, Seattle, NYC): $160,000 – $200,000
• Tier 2 (rest of US): $147,200 – $184,000

Software Engineer II

• Tier 1 (SF, LA, Seattle, NYC): $132,000 – $165,000
• Tier 2 (rest of US): $121,400 – $151,800

Compensation is evaluated based on qualifications, interview performance, internal equity, market data, and location. An attractive mix of salary and equity is provided.

Full‑Time Employee Benefits

• Health: Full premiums covered on base healthcare, dental, and vision for you; half covered for dependents. Mental health and well‑being support included.
• Retirement: 401(k) with 100 % match up to 3 % of salary and 50 % match up to another 2 %.
• Flexible time off: Open, flexible vacation policy.
• Parental leave: Up to 16 weeks for birth, up to 8 weeks for other new parents (birth, adoption, fostering).
• Professional development: Annual budget for books, courses, conferences, plus an annual home office/desk stipend.
• Work environment: Co‑working space stipend for remote workers not near the SF office.
• On‑site meals: Lunch provided 2×+ per week for employees onsite at the San Francisco office.
• Company offsites: Twice a year, team‑wide gatherings.
• Performance reviews: Bi‑annual reviews for regular feedback and fair compensation.