As a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer on LaunchDarkly’s Flag Delivery Network (FDN) team, you will shape a high-performance, globally distributed system for modern software delivery.
The FDN is responsible for delivering real-time feature flag updates to tens of millions of connected SDKs across various environments, handling hundreds of thousands to millions of updates per second.
This infrastructure is mission-critical, and your work will impact the performance, reliability, and safety of software rollouts for innovative engineering teams.
The role is suited for individuals who excel in building low-latency, high-availability systems at scale.
You will architect and evolve systems behind the global edge delivery infrastructure, collaborate with SDK and platform teams, and lead initiatives in edge computing and real-time data propagation.
You are expected to lead by example, drive operational excellence, mentor teammates, and own systems throughout their lifecycle, including participating in the on-call rotation.
This senior-level role requires deep technical experience, a systems-thinking mindset, and a bias for action.
Requirements:
You must have proven experience in architecting, building, and operating complex, large-scale backend and infrastructure services, with a multi-year focus specifically on distributed systems, typically requiring 10+ years of relevant industry experience.
A deep understanding of event-driven architectures, streaming protocols (e.g., Server-Sent Events, WebSockets), and stateful connection management at scale is essential.
Expertise in systems programming languages such as Go, Java, or Rust is required, with a preference for Go and some Rust experience.
Familiarity with real-time data pipelines, load balancing, and global edge networks/CDNs is necessary.
You should have proven experience in monitoring, observability, and operational excellence, designing systems with robust telemetry and actionable alerting to meet SLOs for low latency and high availability.
Experience operating systems in cloud environments (e.g., AWS, GCP) using infrastructure-as-code tools is required.
You must have experience working with distributed data stores and caching systems (e.g., Redis, DynamoDB, Kafka, Varnish).
A proven history of technical leadership, including setting direction, breaking down complex problems, and influencing outcomes across teams is essential.
Benefits:
The target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones for Level P5 are as follows: Zone 1 (San Francisco/Bay Area or New York City Metropolitan Area): $209,000 - $287,000; Zone 2 (Boston, DC, Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Seattle): $188,000 - $259,000; Zone 3 (All other US locations): $177,000 - $244,000.
LaunchDarkly offers Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.
The company operates from a place of high trust and transparency, providing clear pay ranges to align with candidates' needs.
LaunchDarkly values diversity and is an equal opportunity employer, ensuring a respectful and inclusive workplace.
