Systems Engineer - Web Platform

Systems Engineer – Web Platform

Summary

We’re Pax Andromeda, a well-funded startup based in San Francisco. We’re building a new open-source application engine on top of web technologies, and we're looking for an experienced engineer with a deep background in both web tech and native application stacks.

Responsibilities

We are looking for a hybrid web/systems engineer with experience in both C++ and JavaScript. We are developing frameworks and tooling that bind native system primitives to high-level constructs, based on WebKit, pushing as much implementation as possible up into the JavaScript layer (and maintaining native performance). We move between the two sides of the stack daily, so comfort in both is essential.

The problem domain is expansive and multidisciplinary. You will build and own significant portions of the product but we don’t expect you to come in with knowledge across 100% of the surface area. You will be a great fit if you have deep experience in two or more focus areas in the list below and are comfortable owning them on both sides of the native/JS boundary. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Skills

Requires experience in both C++ and JavaScript.

• JS engine embedding and bindings: JSC / WebCore embedding (or V8/SpiderMonkey/similar), code generation, libclang, IDL, marshalling between native and JS types
• Graphics: Skia, Metal, Vulkan, CoreGraphics, WebGPU, web and system compositors
• Media playback: hardware decoding (VideoToolbox, VA-API), GStreamer, direct scanout
• Networking: libcurl, QUIC, OS networking primitives, split network-process architectures
• Wayland: client and server implementations, extensions
• Windows: application frameworks, drivers, WINE, DirectX
• IPC: shared memory, UNIX domain sockets, Mach ports, D-Bus, command serialization
• Build tooling: CI, CMake, multi-platform builds, artifact distribution
• Virtualization: virtio, libvirt, hypervisors
• Debugging: LLDB, gdb, Chrome Dev Tools protocol
• Security and performance: cross-cutting across any of the above

You Might Be a Good Fit If

• You have a passion for delivering high quality experiences to users
• You have experience in a similar stack or problem space
• You have experience building concurrent software systems
• You have the ability to find creative solutions to complex performance problems: the web platform lets developers do crazy things, users expect things to be fast even if the website wasn’t built in the most optimal way.
• You care about company culture, engineering culture, and best practices.