Staff Software Backend Engineer, Tech Lead - Foundations
NetBox Labs · United States
About NetBox Labs
At NetBox Labs, our mission is to make it easier to build and manage complex networks and infrastructure. We provide the leading network infrastructure management platform used by enterprises, data centers, and network practitioners worldwide.
Why This Role, Why Now
Foundations is the platform software team at NetBox Labs. It owns the set of shared services, standards, and tools that all applications and delivery methods use: UI, Auth, Secrets, Customer Usage Monitoring, Entitlements Management, etc
What You'll Own
The Foundations service catalog contains our core platform offerings. You will contribute to decisions on what goes into the catalog and what stays off it. You and your team will release each service as a finished artifact - software or documentation - that application teams use. Examples of catalog offerings:
Identity and access: user management, authentication and authorization (including PAS), the organization, tenant, and user model, and customer secrets.
Shared application services: the UI platform and shared frontend components, customer usage telemetry.
Platform standards: Kubernetes, Postgres, Redis, cloud infrastructure, and customer environments in collaboration with the needs of the Delivery Teams
Developer experience: the local development environment, and the integration of new components into that experience.
Contracts across delivery methods: NetBox Cloud and NetBox Enterprise can implement a catalog service in different ways. You make sure that each difference is documented. Where possible, you put the difference behind one consistent interface.
The service catalog lifecycle: You review catalog services every quarter and when application teams give feedback. You approve an exception only with a documented reason and an exit plan.
Technical leadership of the team: You lead and mentor the Foundations engineers through daily technical work. The engineers do not report to you.
What You Won't Own
This is a hands-on technical lead role, not a people management role.
People management
The EM owns hiring, performance management, and team process. You work closely with the EM and give input on all three.
Product priorities
The Foundations Product Manager owns priorities. You align technical plans with those priorities. You challenge a priority when its technical cost is high.
What Success Looks Like (12 Months)
Each high-priority catalog service is DONE: an application team uses it and gets value from it.
Application teams do not re-implement a concern that the catalog covers.
For each catalog service, all differences between Cloud and Enterprise are documented.
Foundations makes technical decisions without escalation to the Director.
You and the EM run the team together, with a clear split of responsibilities.
Complexities of the role
Scope
Many shared concerns can move into Foundations. If too many move in, delivery stops and ownership becomes unclear.
Adoption
A catalog service that application teams do not use has no value. You must design services that teams want to use. You must also get the teams to adopt them.
Cloud and Enterprise differences
Catalog services run in NetBox Cloud and in customer environments for NetBox Enterprise. Customer environments give less observability and slower feedback. A difference that nobody records becomes an operational or customer problem later.
Access control is a security boundary
An error in access control is a security incident. PAS changes need a security review before release. You must design for this from the start.
Decisions already made
Many catalog services have design decisions in place. You must decide quickly what to keep and what to change.
What We're Looking For
Platform ownership You have 7+ years of software development experience. This includes technical ownership of a platform engineering function.
Platform breadth You have worked across several platform areas, for example identity, data stores, service communication, and developer tools. You can judge a design outside your main area of depth.
Identity and access You have direct experience with authentication and authorization systems, for example OAuth, SSO, or role-based access control.
APIs for other teams You have designed APIs that other engineering teams use.
Backend depth You write backend code in Python and Go. You have strong Linux and distributed systems fundamentals. You understand Kubernetes concepts.
Leadership without authority You have led engineering work without formal manager authority.
Startup experience You have 5+ years of experience in a B2B software startup or a high-growth organization.
Decisions under ambiguity You have a track record of technical decisions made with incomplete information.
AI development workflow: Hands-on experience building inside an AI-augmented development harness, including Claude Code and the workflows that make agentic tooling reliable, while remaining accountable for correctness, security, and tests
Nice to have
Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, operators, and container orchestration.
Experience with network management or infrastructure software, for example NetBox.
Open-source contributions or project involvement.
About NetBox Labs:
NetBox Labs helps companies build and manage complex networks. We help customers accelerate network automation by delivering open, composable products and supporting the network automation community.
NetBox Labs is the commercial steward of open source NetBox, the world’s most popular network source of truth, and Orb, the next-generation open source network observability platform. Our products include NetBox Enterprise, a fully supported self-managed NetBox with advanced features, and NetBox Cloud, a secure, scalable, and reliable SaaS edition of NetBox.
NetBox powers thousands of companies, and NetBox Labs is backed by investment from Notable Capital (formerly GGV), Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt, Flybridge, IBM, Salesforce Ventures, and Mango Capital.
Our culture and values:
We own and solve problems with high attention to detail.
Our open source contributors, users, customers & team are all part of our community. When our community wins, we win.
We prioritize simplicity and think twice before adding complexity
Clear communication helps keep our team aligned and collaborating smoothly.
NetBox Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe diverse teams build better software, and we welcome applicants of every race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, and veteran status. If you need accommodation at any point in the process, just let us know.