Software Engineer (Multiple roles -- mid, Senior, Staff levels)

Note: ROOST is hiring multiple software engineering roles at multiple levels from mid-career, Senior, and Staff. The post below is for the Staff level; please see https://roost.tools/careers/ for others.

These positions are fully remote and available in multiple countries. If you are interested but not located in the country of this post, please apply.

Position Overview

Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) is seeking its first Staff Software Engineer to join our team in building the safety infrastructure for the AI powered internet. As a member of our team you will lead designing, implementing, and optimizing large scale systems for online safety, like rules engines, review tools, and ML platforms for supervised and unsupervised classifier training. You will work closely with ROOST’s team members including our growing engineering team, our Technical Design Committee, and the open source community of contributors.

As a technical leader in the engineering team, you will be responsible for making design decisions and managing execution timelines as well as quality. You will communicate with the community as well as the users of our infrastructure to explain the design choices, project status, and listen to feedback for improvement. If you are passionate about online safety, excited about the open source mission, and able to work with a diverse group of developers, this is the role for you.

What We're Building

ROOST is creating foundational infrastructure for a trust and safety workflow. This is the infrastructure that enables an organization to detect policy-violating content or behavior, then route, review, enforce, and log that content and or behavior. This is a system that’s heavy on data ingestion and processing, enforcing user-defined rules, and must be performant at scale.

We also know AI is creating new challenges and opportunities for online safety; we’re building tools that are resilient and relevant to these changes. ROOST’s drafted, near-term roadmap is publicly available, as is the investigation and rules engine, Osprey.

Key Responsibilities

Bring the best of safety technology for the users of ROOST tools.

With the Chief Technology Officer and the Technical Design Committee, develop a prioritized list of safety tools that ROOST will build

Lay out the technical architecture and design choices for the tools being developed like high throughput rules engines (Osprey), review tools (Coop), ML platform for supervised and unsupervised learning, and evaluation systems for classifiers and datasets.

Drive engineering decisions including system design, performance, maintainability, and implementation trade-offs while building well architected platforms that can be extended. Bring technical leadership and an experienced point of view, and be responsible for getting user and community buy-in to engineering decisions.

Collaborate with diverse stakeholders - trust and safety teams, open source community, and academic researchers.

Mentor and provide guidance to developers, community members, and the users of ROOST’s tools.

As an engineering leader for ROOST’s open source projects

Create and model an engineering culture of high quality execution and teamwork through the full project lifecycle. This includes participating in product design; owning milestone planning; instilling code quality, rigor, testing, and monitoring; and ensuring quality developer experiences through documentation.

Manage timely development and shipping of tools with predictable features and bug fixes

Ensure maximal cross-platform compatibility and flexibility by building systems that can be deployed across high-scale social platforms and resource limited organizations.

Evaluate and incorporate user and contributor feedback into the projects

Qualifications

Must-have

8 years of experience in software design and development and at least 5 years of experience designing, building, and optimizing large-scale infrastructure like API services, storage, data processing, or ML platforms.

Exhibits attention to detail in focusing on reliability, scalability, security, and continuous improvement.

Proven record of working with disparate teams and individuals, understanding issues, and making decisions and communicating them transparently.

A language polyglot – comfortable learning and working in new languages – and familiar with common infrastructure and high performance systems languages like Python, Go, or Rust

Nice-to-have

Understanding of the open source ecosystem and prior contributions to OSS

3 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction.

Experience designing, analyzing and improving efficiency, scalability, and stability of various system resources

Prior experience in startups, nonprofits, and or small team environments

About ROOST

ROOST is a community effort to build scalable and resilient safety infrastructure for the AI era. Many organizations – big and small – still lack access to basic safety resources, hindering innovation and putting users at risk.

ROOST develops, maintains, and distributes open source building blocks to safeguard global users and communities. Backed by dedicated technical teams and leading experts, ROOST meets organizations where they are and provides hands-on support at every stage of their safety journey. You can learn more about the ROOST launch and our partners’ support at roost.tools.

Compensation and Structure

This is a full time position reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, and collaborating closely with ROOST’s Head of Product.

ROOST is a remote organization with global hiring flexibility; this role will be expected to work a portion of hours overlapping with North American timezones.

ROOST aims to offer competitive compensation based on candidates’ experience and their regional market. In the US, the compensation range is $210,000 - 270,000 USD. This role is eligible for a performance-based bonus.

Comprehensive Benefits Package:

Premium health, dental, and vision coverage for employee and dependents

401(k) with matching

PTO

Remote-first work environment with flexible hours

ROOST is a non-profit fiscally sponsored by Global Impact. Individuals based in the US will be employed by Global Impact on behalf of ROOST.

What you'll experience at ROOST

As part of our early-stage team of 3 people and close to 30 community partners, you’ll have a pivotal role shaping how ROOST evolves during its initial growth phase.

A community that genuinely values different perspectives and approaches

The chance to work across organizational boundaries with partners who share our mission

The opportunity to build technology that makes a meaningful difference in online safety and helps protect vulnerable communities online

The chance to define best practices in an emerging field and contribute to safer digital spaces globally

Regular opportunities to engage with industry and civic leaders and working on Trust & Safety challenges

Flexible work arrangements that prioritize results and impact over traditional office structures

How to apply

Please share your resume and a brief note about why ROOST's mission resonates with you and how your experience could help us advance it. Send these materials to hiring@roost.tools with "Staff SWE - [Your Name]" in the subject line.

ROOST is committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of communities we aim to serve. We especially encourage applications from people whose perspectives are traditionally underrepresented in technology.

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