Senior Software Engineer

About Authorium Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We are a GovTech SaaS platform that unifies the massive, complex workflows—procurement, grants, and budgeting—that keep state and local governments running. Our platform replaces fragmented spreadsheets and decades-old legacy systems with a unified data layer that manages billions of dollars in public funds. We serve the agencies that support millions of citizens, including California’s CDSS, CalPERS, and EDD, as well as major state agencies in Florida and Washington. The Business: We are a 43-person company growing 45% YoY, with a clear path to profitability by Q4 2026. We have deep product market fit and are scaling to meet the demands of the world's most complex government agencies. Why This Role Exists We are establishing our San Francisco office as a strategic center for high-bandwidth engineering and product innovation. This is a foundational role for a senior engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative environment and wants to be "in the room" where our most complex architectural decisions are made. While Authorium is a distributed company, our SF office is where we tackle our most intricate "war room" challenges—from modularizing our core domain to whiteboarding the next generation of our workflow engine. You will be a primary driver of the technical integrity of our platform, setting the quality bar and shipping the features that will power our next major phase of expansion. What You Will Be Doing Architecting the Core: Own the most complex work across our platform, including robust versioning systems, approval workflows, and permission models. Technical Sovereignty: Make architectural decisions that hold up across multiple customer configurations. You will write ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) and lead the modularization of our core domain. High-Bandwidth Collaboration: Work in-person (Monday–Thursday) with our SF leadership team to whiteboard solutions, debug production bottlenecks, and move from idea to deployment at high velocity. Technical Excellence: Set the standard for engineering quality. You’ll lead deep, architectural code reviews and drive improvements to our automated quality gates. AI-Native Workflow: Use Cursor and Claude to automate boilerplate and focus on high-level design. You’ll define our AI-first patterns—from leveraging agents for testing to streamlining code reviews—ensuring we stay at the frontier of developer leverage. Must Have 6+ years of professional full-stack experience. We value deep engineering fundamentals (system design, database optimization, clean architecture) over specific syntax. Systems Thinker: A proven track record of designing and maintaining complex domain objects and data models in production. High-Agency: You don't wait for a perfectly groomed ticket. You can partner with product managers to turn ambiguous requirements into elegant technical specs. Security Minded: You treat security as a core engineering discipline. You have a deep understanding of defensive coding practices and the authorization models required to protect sensitive data. Quality Obsessed: A history of high code quality (comprehensive testing, clean PR history) and a desire to mentor others to meet that bar. San Francisco Based: Energized by an in-office (Monday-Thursday) collaborative culture. Nice to Have Modern Frontend Experience: Familiarity with React and/or Next.js — we're actively evolving our frontend stack, and if React or Next.js is in your background, we want to hear about it. Ruby on Rails Mastery: Deep knowledge of Rails conventions and the modular monolith pattern (Packwerk). Complex Document Infrastructure: Experience with document generation (PDFs), rich text editors, or building systems to process unstructured data within secure workflows. Regulated Industry Experience: Previous work in compliance-heavy environments such as GovTech, FinTech, or HealthTech (FedRAMP, SOC 2, or HIPAA). Infrastructure: Experience with AWS (ECS/EKS, CloudWatch, Parameter Store) and modern deployment pipelines. Grow Stage Veteran: Previous experience at a company in the $5M–$30M ARR range where you were one of the senior-most individual contributors. Benefits Salary: $170,000-$230,000 Equity 100% benefits coverage for employee 401(k) plan Flexible PTO Home office stipend Comprehensive wellness benefits Commuter stipend