Staff Backend Engineer, Historical APIs

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 https://www.helius.dev/blog/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