Staff Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

LiveKit

Staff engineer designing resilient distributed systems for LiveKit, whose infrastructure powers multimodal AI audio and visual interfaces. Building core services, observability, and low-latency platform capabilities.

Posted 8/5/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $200,000 - $300,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in designing and delivering distributed systems, with a strong focus on observability, reliability, and performance. Proficient in Go programming and familiar with tools and technologies that enhance system capabilities and developer efficiency.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Distributed Systems DesignGo Programming FluencyObservability Tooling ExperienceMetrics and Tracing ExpertiseReal-Time Infrastructure Exposure

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Distributed SystemsProgramming FundamentalsData Flow ReasoningSystem PrototypingTesting and MonitoringPerformance OptimizationComponent DecompositionPub/Sub SystemsCoordination SystemsLow-Latency Infrastructure

Soft Skills

Clear CommunicationSound JudgmentQuick LearningOwnership and AccountabilityPractical Engineering Approach

Tools & Technologies

GoGRPCNATSEtcdRaftPaxosKubernetesPrometheusOpenTelemetryClickHouse

Industry Keywords

ObservabilityReal-Time SystemsDistributed State ManagementCloud InfrastructureDeveloper Velocity

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

CloudDistributed SystemsGoGRPCKubernetesPrometheus

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design and evolve the core control, data, and observability systems that power LiveKit Cloud
Implement resilient, region-spanning architectures that degrade gracefully under partial failure
Build libraries, protocols, and tooling that raise reliability and developer velocity across the organization
Diagnose and harden critical paths using metrics, tracing, testing, and real-world traffic insights
Shape new platform capabilities across identity, scheduling, observability, and distributed state management
Prototype, test, ship, monitor, and iterate on systems end-to-end
Work across core services, telephony, and observability for LiveKit's platform

Requirements

What you’ll need

Experience designing and delivering distributed systems in production
Strong programming fundamentals
Sound judgment and ability to learn quickly
Ability to take ownership end-to-end: prototype, test, ship, monitor, and iterate
Comfortable with consensus, coordination, and distributed failure modes
Ability to reason about data flow, state, performance, and correctness
Ability to reduce complex systems into understandable components
Clear communication and practical engineering approach
Go fluency preferred; willingness to learn Go if not already experienced
Hands-on experience with pub/sub, RPC, or coordination systems such as NATS, etcd, Raft, or Paxos preferred
Exposure to real-time or low-latency infrastructure preferred
Experience shipping observability tooling, including tracing, metrics, or at-scale logging, preferred
Familiarity with Go, psrpc, gRPC, Raft, NATS, Kubernetes, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and ClickHouse
Legally authorized to work in the US or country of residence
Must indicate whether future sponsorship support would be required

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive salary and equity package
Health, dental, and vision benefits
Flexible vacation policy
Opportunity to shape the brand of a fast-growing developer platform
Collaboration with a small, senior team that deeply values craft and creativity