# Software Engineer, Strategic Projects

**Company:** [Tailscale](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/tailscale)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Fullstack Engineering
**Salary:** $163k – $226k/yr
**Skills:** Go, LLMs, coding agents, third-party apis, Networking, Observability, Incident Response, OAuth, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, RBAC, Python, Rust, TypeScript
**Posted:** 2026-08-05

> Build and productionize emerging connectivity and AI-focused software, partnering with product-minded engineers and reference customers. The role emphasizes Go, production hardening, observability, security, networking, and effective use of coding agents in a fully remote environment.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Partner with product-minded engineers from the start, shaping prototypes such as MCP gateways, LLM proxies, sandboxes, and remote servers so the path to production is built in.
- Co-own the journey from demo to stable production software through hardening, error handling, observability, and operational tooling.
- Own the production bar for prototypes that graduate into Tailscale’s product surface area, including security and review practices for agent-generated code.
- Work with reference customers to integrate Tailscale for internal adoption and product embedding, emphasizing reliability, maintainability, and long-term supportability.
- Find and close edge cases, regressions, flaky behavior, missing tests, and undocumented operational gaps.
- Establish and maintain review, testing, and security practices that enable fast, safe delivery of agent-generated code.
- Travel less than 10%, primarily for team and company offsites, with optional conferences or customer visits in North America.

## Requirements
- Experience taking software from prototype to production in startup-like environments.
- Strong ability to harden, stabilize, and maintain production software.
- Go experience is required.
- Experience integrating third-party APIs and basic networking knowledge.
- Heavy daily use of coding agents such as Claude Code or Cursor, and LLMs in engineering workflows.
- Ability to evaluate where coding agents accelerate work or fail, and to apply review, testing, and security practices that preserve production quality.
- Ability to collaborate closely with exploratory, product-minded engineers.
- Comfort with shifting priorities, short prototype-to-production timelines, and a high shipping bar.
- Ability to work independently in a remote environment.

## Nice to Have
- Experience operating production services, including observability, on-call, incident response, performance, and reliability.
- Experience validating prototype code for production use with security teams.
- Identity infrastructure experience, including IdP platforms, identity sync and provisioning, and directory services.
- Knowledge of OAuth, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, RBAC, ABAC, session management, MFA, or passwordless authentication.
- Experience building applications on LLMs and agentic systems.
- Familiarity with Tailscale and networking challenges in multicloud and hybrid deployments.
- Open source participation or experience producing public artifacts such as blog posts, talks, or reference implementations.
- Python, Rust, or TypeScript experience.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Base salary range of **$163,000–$226,000 USD**.
- Equity incentive plan and variable commission for quota-based roles.
- Health, vision, dental, and other comprehensive group benefits with no waiting period.
- Remote-first, flexible work environment and corporate coworking program.
- Employer-funded retirement contributions, matching contributions dollar-for-dollar up to a maximum annual employer contribution equal to 0.75% of eligible compensation.
- Virtual and in-person social events and opportunities to connect with colleagues in person.

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