Staff Backend Engineer, Historical APIs

Location

North America

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Remote

Department

Engineering

About Helius

Helius is building the core infrastructure for Solana - empowering developers to create the next generation of crypto-powered applications. Our mission is to accelerate the development of internet capital markets by making it easier, faster, and more intuitive to build on-chain.

Thousands of teams - from early-stage startups to industry leaders like Coinbase, Phantom, and Jupiter - rely on Helius APIs, webhooks, and indexing tools to power their products. Backed by Haun Ventures, Founders Fund, and Foundation Capital, we’re a small, senior team obsessed with performance, simplicity, and scalability in decentralized systems.

Read our Helius Manifesto to see how we work and what we value.

About the Role

We're looking for a Staff Backend Engineer who wants to own and evolve serious infrastructure. This isn't about executing on a roadmap - you'll define technical direction, architect systems that scale to multi-petabyte datasets, and set the standard for engineering excellence across the team. You'll work autonomously on high-impact problems, mentor senior engineers, and drive architectural decisions that shape the future of our infrastructure.

About the Team

The Archival team exposes APIs for querying Solana’s multi-petabyte ledger with sub-100ms. If you love the challenge of large datasets and low-latency performance engineering, this is the right team for you. The team moves fast, owns an enormous surface area, and operates like a small group of founders sitting in the critical path of the company.

What You'll Do

• Architect and lead the development of ingestion, indexing, and retrieval systems across our archival infrastructure
• Drive technical strategy for API performance, reliability, and scalability across high-throughput services
• Design and optimize data models and query patterns for ClickHouse, Postgres, and RocksDB at scale
• Lead system design discussions and make architectural decisions on caching, distributed data patterns, and performance trade-offs
• Set standards for operational excellence, debugging methodologies, and performance profiling across production systems
• Mentor senior engineers and elevate the team's technical capabilities
• Partner with leadership on long-term technical roadmap and infrastructure investments
• Identify and drive solutions to complex, ambiguous problems that span multiple systems

What You'll Bring

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience with a track record of building large-scale, high-performance systems
• Deep expertise in Rust (strongly preferred), C++, or equivalent systems programming languages
• Proven experience designing and operating distributed systems, data pipelines, and performance-critical infrastructure at scale
• Expert-level knowledge of database internals, schema design, and optimization patterns for large datasets
• Demonstrated ability to architect simple, elegant solutions to complex technical problems
• Strong technical leadership and mentorship skills with the ability to influence without authority
• Track record of driving technical decisions and long-term architectural vision
• Relentless curiosity and a drive to push the boundaries of what's possible in performance engineering
• Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to thrive in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment

Nice to Have

• Experience with Solana, blockchain, or web3 infrastructure
• Deep expertise with Postgres, ClickHouse, and/or RocksDB internals
• Previous experience in a Staff or Principal engineering role
• Open source contributions or technical writing that demonstrates depth of expertise

Why Helius?

• High-impact work: Your code will power applications used by millions across the Solana ecosystem, including Coinbase, Jupiter, and Phantom
• Serious engineering: Build fast, reliable systems and user experiences across distributed infra, high-throughput backends, and modern frontend stacks
• Ownership & growth: Lead critical initiatives, influence architecture and product direction, and take on more responsibility as the company scales
• Remote-first flexibility: Work where you’re most effective with a flexible, fully distributed team
• Competitive comp & perks: Market-leading salary, meaningful equity, generous vacation, wellness budgets, and support for learning and travel
• Mission-driven team: Join ambitious builders who move fast, take ownership, and are shaping the future of decentralized apps