About Rownd

Overview

Rownd is changing how authentication works across the internet. Our goal is to help companies increase user sign-ups (i.e., conversion rates) by eliminating the traditional registration / sign-up / sign-in page.

How are we doing this?

First, we believe that passwords should be a thing of the past, so we're committed to building a product that doesn't use passwords at all and relies on mechanisms like smart links, WebAuthn, Fido, crypto wallets, as well as new/novel ways of authentication that might not be built or standardized yet!

Furthermore, our technology helps companies move the authentication "wall" deeper into their product so that their end-users can get a better feel for what they might be able to do before they fully sign-up or authenticate.

Who we are

We're a team of passionate product managers, engineers, and designers who are serious about making the internet a better place for everyone through the lens of authentication.

We have a ton of industry experience at Fortune 50 companies, so we've been around the block a few times. We've seen plenty of bad UX around authentication and we know we can do it way better.

About the role

Skills:MySQL, Node.js, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Who we are

Rownd is building the internet of the future—one that doesn't use passwords or convoluted registration processes, all while protecting every individual using it. We’re building world-class tools that help businesses convert more of their website and app visitors into actual customers by eliminating the friction that's common today with many authentication processes.

Rownd is a seed-stage startup, so you’ll be getting in near the ground floor of the next generation of web and mobile app authentication. You’ll get the chance to help drive our roadmap, determine what needs to be worked on during each iteration, and collaboratively set the stage for our collective success.

If you’re excited at the prospect of building this future in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment, then we'd love to hear from you!

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for an experienced Platform Engineer who is passionate about building robust, scalable infrastructure that can be used across public and government cloud platforms.

You’re the right candidate if:

You think that most web and mobile authentication or registration processes are broken.
You’re passionate about infrastructure as code, automation, databases, and servers.
You’ve got solid backend software engineering chops.
You hate repetitive tasks and want to automate everything.
You view security and UX as a gradient with tradeoffs that need to be balanced.

What you’ll do

Build and maintain Rownd’s infrastructure, including automation, GitOps, and more.
Develop a process making it easy to deploy Rownd across multiple container-based and serverless environments.
Design and build backend APIs and business logic using Node.js
Work closely with our team to define what’s possible, push the limits, and make Rownd do more with less.
Work as a member of the software engineering team to connect the front-end and back-end via REST and/or GraphQL APIs.
Own your services from inception to deployment.

What you’ll need

A good candidate for this job probably has many of these characteristics:

Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
Excellent communication and collaboration abilities
Experience designing and implementing scalable and resilient cloud-native applications
Knowledge of infrastructure automation tools (e.g., Pulumi, Terraform, etc)
Experience implementing and managing infrastructure as code (IaC) for cloud environments like AWS and Cloudflare
A proven history of building and managing highly available and fault-tolerant systems
Familiarity with serverless computing and event-driven architectures
Experience with container orchestration for deploying and scaling applications
Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack)
Experience with REST APIs and OpenAPI specifications
The ability to grow and adapt to new challenges, languages, and platforms

It’d be cool if you also had:

Strong documentation skills for system designs and processes
Experience working on projects involving sensitive data or government compliance
Proficiency in database management and design (e.g., SQL, NoSQL, relational, and non-relational databases)
Knowledge of security best practices for backend development and data protection
Familiarity with message brokers and queuing systems (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ)
Experience working with native mobile app languages and frameworks like Swift, Kotlin, UIKit, and so on

Our commitment to you

At Rownd, we put our employees first alongside our mission. We want you to feel ownership and fulfillment in your work. We strive to create a remote-first work environment where everyone feels connected to their colleagues and empowered to get things done with minimal bureaucracy. Some of the benefits we offer include:

Mission-led: We’re radically changing the way people authenticate across the internet. Be at the forefront of a new paradigm.
Work remotely: at home or wherever you find it easiest to focus, including access to co-working space if you choose.
Time together: we bring the whole team together geographically three to four times per year for in-person collaboration, team building, and fun.
Time off: You must take at least two weeks off each year. Most of us take three to four weeks off, in addition to locally recognized holidays.
Health: we pay up to 100% of disability, health, and vision costs for you, with competitive rates for additional family members and dental coverage. We also include complimentary life insurance coverage at 100% of your salary.
Equity: Every employee shares in the ownership of Rownd.

Final details

Hiring is a two-way street: we’re evaluating you and you’re evaluating us. As you apply with your LinkedIn profile (or something similar), we’d also appreciate some links or information about projects you’ve spent time building and supporting. Conversely, we invite you to share any insights or feedback you may have about our platform and product during your interview.

Technology

Our top-level stack is pretty standard: Node.js, React, perhaps some Golang here and there. Hosted on AWS w/ Kubernetes and our SPA UI runs on Netlify.

As we get deeper into the stack, we're using Rust and Cloudflare to do some highly performant and interesting things in the data storage and security space. If you talk to us, we can chat more about the details!

Interview Process

We don't want to waste your time or ours, so we'll try to move things along as quickly as possible. We believe interviews are simply a conversation to help us get to know each other, so please don't be nervous!

Our hiring flow usually looks something like this:

Initial conversation between you and one of our co-founders to gauge overall fit for the position, compensation, etc.
Individual or small-group, 30-minute conversations (2 - 3) with each co-founder and other employees you'll be working with
A brief reference / background check
Offer

If you'd like to dip your toe in as a 1099 contractor before jumping in fully, let us know! While we want all of our people to be full-time, W-2 employees, we're open to a period of contracting to better determine cultural fit.

Rownd remote jobs

Experienced Platform Engineer