Senior Backend Engineer (Rust)
Role summary
MetalBear is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer with 2+ years of production-grade Rust experience to join their remote-first startup. This role focuses on developing and enhancing mirrord, a developer tool for cloud engineers that simplifies running local processes in cloud environments. The engineer will contribute to high-performance Rust code, improve developer experience, collaborate on architecture and feature design, and engage with the open-source community. Requirements include 5+ years of software development experience, strong systems-level thinking, and familiarity with cloud-native technologies like Docker and Kubernetes beyond the basics. Experience with Kubernetes development and backend infrastructure tooling is preferred.
MetalBear is building the next generation of
developer tools for cloud engineers
. Our flagship product,
mirrord
, lets developers run local processes as if they were running directly inside their cloud environment — without the friction of deployment or risk of breaking shared environments.
mirrord’s open-source core is already trusted by
thousands of developers worldwide
, and our paid product is generating meaningful revenue — including from
Fortune 500 companies
. We’re scaling quickly and looking for an experienced
Rust engineer
to help us push mirrord to the next level.
This is a rare chance to work on
deep systems engineering challenges
while building an open-source product that developers love.
🚀
What You’ll Do
- Contribute to high-performance Rust code that powers real-time mirroring between local development and remote Kubernetes environments.
- Improve the developer experience — making cloud development as seamless and fast as working locally.
- Collaborate closely with our small, world-class engineering team on architecture, performance optimization, and new feature design.
- Engage with our open-source community — gather feedback, debug issues, and contribute to a product developers love.
Requirements:
- 5+ years of professional software development experience.
- 2+ years writing production-grade Rust.
- Strong systems-level thinking and an ability to debug complex, distributed environments.
- Comfort working async in a remote-first startup environment with high autonomy.
- Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Docker, containers, Kubernetes) beyond the basics.
🌟
Nice to Have
- Experience building developer tools for or extending Kubernetes.
- Experience building Kubernetes operators or other components that interact with the Kubernetes API.
- Familiarity with backend infrastructure tooling like datastores, message brokers, GitOps tools, etc.
- Open-source experience — contributing to or maintaining developer-facing OSS projects.
📈
Why Join MetalBear
- Work on hard, meaningful problems at the intersection of local development and cloud infrastructure.
- Be part of a small, high-caliber team where your work directly impacts thousands of developers and some of the world’s biggest companies.
- Remote-first and async-friendly — high trust, low meetings, and flexibility to do your best work.
- Competitive salary, meaningful stock options, and a culture that values focus and autonomy.
- Build tools developers love — OSS-first, fast-growing, and already revenue-generating.
