[Hiring] Backend Engineer @Lighthouse

Role Description

You'll join our Crawler Engineering team as a Backend Engineer focused on data acquisition. This is a building role: you'll design and develop high-performance systems, mostly in Rust, that collect billions of data points from the web. The work sits where backend engineering meets how the web works: HTTP stacks, proxies and browser tooling. When a data source blocks an approach, you'll dig into what's happening on the wire and find another way forward. You'll also help make our infrastructure "agent-friendly", so other teams can safely build on it with AI.

Where you will have impact

• Design, build and improve backend systems for data acquisition that handle close to 200 million requests a day.
• Work on our in-house proxy layer and browser tooling: request routing, connection handling and protocol-level behaviour.
• Investigate hard crawler problems, test alternative approaches when one gets blocked, and turn what works into robust, reusable systems.
• Build clear interfaces and guardrails so other teams and AI agents can use what you build reliably.
• Own the quality of your code, including code written with AI assistance: tests, observability and maintainability.
• Work closely with crawler engineers, DevOps and Security to ship solutions that are secure and scalable.

Qualifications

• You have hands-on experience building, deploying and running production backend services in a cloud environment.
• You're experienced with a systems language such as Rust or C/C++, or you have a strong track record in another backend language and a real drive to go deep in Rust.
• You have a solid grasp of how the web works under the hood: HTTP, TCP/IP, TLS and proxies.
• You have an R&D mindset. You're curious about how browsers and network stacks work internally, you're comfortable with ambiguity, and you'd rather prove a hypothesis than assume it.
• You have strong analytical and debugging skills. You're comfortable with packet captures, profilers and reading other people's source code.
• You communicate clearly, share your opinions, welcome feedback and work well in a team.
• You're fluent in English.

Technologies you will work with

• Rust
• TypeScript/Node.js
• Python
• Google Cloud
• Kubernetes
• Prometheus
• Grafana
• Claude Code

Benefits

• Flexible working environment: Work from home or at one of our global offices.
• Flexible time off: Autonomy to manage your work-life balance.
• Alan Healthy benefits: 160€/month for food or nursery.
• Payflow App: Access your earned salary in advance at no cost to you.
• Flexible retribution: Optional benefits through tax-free payroll deductions for food, transportation and/or nursery.
• Wellbeing support: Subsidized up to 80% ClassPass subscription.
• Comprehensive health insurance: 100% Alan coverage for you, your spouse, and dependents.
• Collaborative team: High-bar, friendly, creative, and passionate colleagues.
• Career development: Workshops, frameworks, tools, training, and processes to realize your full potential.
• Impactful work: Shape products relied on by 85,000+ users worldwide.
• Competitive compensation: Proactively maintained to value your work.
• Referral bonuses: Earn rewards for bringing in new talent.