Staff Backend Engineer, Historical APIs
About Helius
Helius is building the core infrastructure for Solana - empowering developers to create the next generation of crypto-powered applications. Our mission is to accelerate the development of internet capital markets by making it easier, faster, and more intuitive to build on-chain.
Thousands of teams - from early-stage startups to industry leaders like Coinbase, Phantom, and Jupiter - rely on Helius APIs, webhooks, and indexing tools to power their products. Backed by Haun Ventures, Founders Fund, and Foundation Capital, we’re a small, senior team obsessed with performance, simplicity, and scalability in decentralized systems.
Read our Helius Manifesto to see how we work and what we value.
About the Role
We're looking for a Staff Backend Engineer who wants to own and evolve serious infrastructure. This isn't about executing on a roadmap - you'll define technical direction, architect systems that scale to multi-petabyte datasets, and set the standard for engineering excellence across the team. You'll work autonomously on high-impact problems, mentor senior engineers, and drive architectural decisions that shape the future of our infrastructure.
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.
What You'll Do
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
What You'll Bring
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
Nice to Have
Experience with Solana, blockchain, or web3 infrastructure
Deep expertise with Postgres, ClickHouse, and/or RocksDB internals
Previous experience in a Staff or Principal engineering role
Open source contributions or technical writing that demonstrates depth of expertise
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