About this role
Writing production code and collaborating directly with technical partners and enterprise customers takes up the majority of the day-to-day work in this role. The team builds Thunderbolt, an open-source AI client created for organizations that require strict control over their data, infrastructure, and model choices. This position exists to shape early enterprise deployments, bridge partner requirements with the core codebase, and help expand Thunderbird beyond email into sustainable privacy-respecting alternatives to big tech ecosystems.
An experienced engineer who thrives in codebases while maintaining strong interpersonal and customer-facing skills will do well here. The person joining this team will translate real-world deployment feedback into product capabilities, maintain customer-specific customizations, and write technical documentation that enables partners to handle routine issues independently.
What you will do
- Build and ship full-stack features, integrations, and customer-specific customizations in the Thunderbolt codebase from front-end UI through APIs, services, and deployment configuration.
- Work directly with technical partners and enterprise customers to understand environments, requirements, and constraints, turning them into technical plans and working software.
- Support pilots, proofs of concept, and early production deployments across partner-hosted and customer-controlled environments.
- Diagnose and fix complex issues across the application, infrastructure, identity and access, integration, and data-access layers.
- Maintain customer-specific customizations over time to ensure they continue functioning as the core product evolves.
- Identify customer requests that should become general product capabilities and collaborate with product and engineering to build them accordingly.
- Write documentation, deployment guidance, and runbooks that allow partners to handle routine issues independently.
What you need
- Ten or more years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time building and shipping production applications with Staff-level scope and impact.
- Strong full-stack engineering skills utilizing modern TypeScript or JavaScript, component-based front-end frameworks, and back-end services, APIs, and integrations.
- Meaningful experience working directly with customers, partners, or systems integrators in a technical capacity that involved writing code.
- Experience building or supporting AI-enabled applications such as LLM platforms, RAG systems, agents, enterprise search, or data connectors.
- Solid understanding of enterprise deployment concerns including authentication, identity providers, access control, self-hosted and hybrid infrastructure, observability, and reliability.
- Clear communication skills with technical implementers and non-technical stakeholders, combined with strong collaboration skills across cross-functional teams.
Nice to have
- Experience with self-hosted, private cloud, sovereign, or regulated deployment environments.
- Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and cloud deployment.
- Experience working with European enterprise or public sector customers, or with data residency and sovereignty requirements.
- Experience supporting security reviews, privacy assessments, or enterprise procurement processes.
- Open-source contributions or experience in open, highly collaborative engineering environments.
Benefits
- Company-provided laptop
- Annual bonus program
- Monthly remote work stipend
- Annual professional development stipend
- 24 days PTO per year (prorated)
- 401(k) contributions
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
Is this position remote?
This is a remote, full-time position. Many of Thunderbolt’s customers and partners are based in Europe, so some regular overlap with European business hours is expected.
What is the salary range for the role?
The base salary range for US candidates is $185,000 to $220,000 USD. Base salaries are benchmarked to local markets and target the 60th percentile of the peer market.
What kind of experience is required for this role?
The role requires 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time building and shipping production applications with Staff-level scope and impact. Candidates also need strong full-stack skills and experience working directly with customers or partners in a technical capacity.
What will I work on during the first few months?
In your first few months, you will help land Thunderbolt’s first enterprise deployments. That involves shipping the customizations those customers need, getting partner-hosted deployments stable, and fixing issues that only show up in real environments.