Staff Software Engineer, Rust

Are you passionate about building secure, high-performance, and reliable infrastructure? Do you thrive on diagnosing and solving hard problems in systems that meet the needs of the most demanding GraphQL workloads in the world? If so, we'd love to talk to you about joining us in operating and evolving next-generation GraphQL runtime infrastructure.

The GraphOS organization owns the critical tier of Apollo's platform — the underlying engine central to making GraphOS a highly performant, secure, governed, and reliable self-service GraphQL platform. As a key member of the GraphOS NA team, you'll be at the heart of this mission, owning the Router and enabling engineering teams to ship faster and deliver richer experiences than ever before.

What you'll do

• Build, test, and maintain fault-tolerant infrastructure for GraphQL runtime platforms, primarily in idiomatic Rust, ensuring security, performance, and reliability.
• Triage, debug, and resolve escalations from enterprise customers running some of the largest GraphQL deployments in the world — hundreds of subgraphs processing trillions of requests per month.
• Operate and improve durable, stable public APIs used by the world's most demanding GraphQL workloads.
• Engage directly with users — whether community members or enterprise customers — to understand their needs, debug issues, and bring insights back to influence the platform's evolution.
• Design scalable, observable systems that integrate seamlessly into diverse customer infrastructure stacks, leveraging self-initiated research and real-world feedback.
• Collaborate with engineers across teams using supportive communication and constructive code reviews to deliver cohesive solutions.
• Mentor and guide teammates in architecting and writing idiomatic Rust code, while considering the end-to-end impact of changes and ensuring alignment with cross-domain concerns.
• Lead architectural discussions and cross-team initiatives, driving impactful changes as a technical leader or coaching others to step into leadership roles.
• Develop comprehensive technical designs and documentation that address cost efficiency, security, and observability.
• Participate in on-call rotations as a core part of the role, ensuring the reliability of mission-critical systems.

Who you are — Minimum requirements

• You have experience with Rust and enjoy writing performant, maintainable code.
• You have expertise in systems engineering, including knowledge of stateless/fault-tolerant systems, event-driven patterns, and distributed paradigms.
• You have strong debugging instincts and are energized by hands-on operational work, not just feature development.
• You excel at cross-team collaboration and have a "rising tide lifts all boats" mentality, positively influencing others across the organization.
• You're passionate about GraphQL, modern developer tooling, and contributing to industry-leading innovations.
• You have a growth mindset and actively seek opportunities to learn and stay current with industry trends.

Nice to have

• Experience with GraphQL or large-scale runtime systems.
• Experience navigating high-escalation or high-incident environments.

About Apollo

Whether you binge-watch a series on Netflix, plan faraway vacations from your phone, or read international news online, you've likely used Apollo's technology this week. Apollo supports some of the largest GraphQL platforms in the world.

We're not looking to rest on our laurels though — we're aiming to change how software is built. Apollo wants to empower every software team to build an amazing user experience across any number of clients, without dealing with a barrage of API endpoints.

Apollo is intent on becoming the company where you can see your career grow through challenging work, collaborating with incredible teammates, and accomplishing the unattainable.

Compensation & Benefits: At Apollo, we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation whilst ensuring consistency within the team in each country. We make hiring decisions based on your skills, experience, and our overall assessment of what we learned during the hiring process.

In addition to the U.S. base salary range, we also provide equity and benefits. Apollo offers all U.S. employees a choice of 3 Anthem Blue Cross medical plans and California residents can also choose from an additional 2 Kaiser medical plans. Dental and Vision benefits are provided by Sun Life Financial.

Location: This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere in the US or Canada (Canada has a different compensation range).

Equal Opportunity: Apollo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a talented and diverse workforce.

Privacy: California residents applying for positions at Apollo can see our privacy policy here.

E-Verify: Apollo is an E-Verify employer and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. For more information please visit E-Verify.

Compensation: $192K - $220K