Staff Backend Engineer - Historical APIs

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.

Key Responsibilities:

• 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

Requirements:

• 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

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.