Low-Level Software Engineer - Recruiting from Scratch : Job Details

Who is Recruiting from Scratch: Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire. About the client:Title of Role: Low-Level Software EngineerLocation: Washington, DC; Palo Alto, CA; Denver, CO; New York, NY Company Stage of Funding: Public Company (NYSE: PLTR) Office Type: Onsite Preferred (2+ days/week in DC office or other listed locations) Salary: $100,000 - $250,000 base (plus competitive equity) Company Description Our client is a publicly traded technology leader that builds mission-critical software platforms for some of the world's most complex data challenges. Their products support major government agencies, healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies in making high-stakes decisions by turning complex data into actionable intelligence. From enabling disaster relief to enhancing national security, this is a company where engineers are directly empowered to make a meaningful global impact. The work environment favors hands-on builders, creative problem-solvers, and technologists driven by purpose. This team is known for its deeply technical culture, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and fast-paced problem-solving. What You Will Do As a Low-Level Software Engineer, you will be a core contributor to a high-impact team working on the software foundations of distributed systems, data pipelines, and performance-critical applications. Your focus will be building efficient, scalable systems that operate close to the metal - often on the edge or in constrained environments - where latency, throughput, and resource optimization are paramount. You'll collaborate with multidisciplinary engineers across domains including embedded systems, networking, and infrastructure to design and deploy performant code in mission-critical environments. The ideal candidate will bring both strong system-level software development experience and a hacker mindset to independently tackle ambiguous, deeply technical problems. Key responsibilities include:

• Developing and maintaining low-level and backend software in Rust, C/C++, or Go
• Building scalable, high-throughput systems (e.g., network stacks, dataplanes, streaming data processing)
• Optimizing for performance and resource efficiency in latency-sensitive environments
• Debugging and profiling systems in production and development environments
• Participating in the full software development lifecycle and driving technical solutions from concept to deployment

Ideal Candidate BackgroundMinimum Qualifications:

• 2-12 years of hands-on software engineering experience
• Expertise with compiled languages (Rust, C/C++, Go) as a core part of your SDLC workflow
• Experience building performant backend or low-level systems software
• Knowledge of basic IP networking concepts
• Demonstrated ability to solve ambiguous, complex problems independently
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field
• U.S. Citizenship required and must be eligible for a U.S. security clearance
• Ability to work onsite in Washington, DC at least two days per week (or other listed office locations)

Preferred but not required:

• Active U.S. Government Security Clearance (Secret or higher)
• Background working in edge compute, secure communications, or defense-adjacent systems
• Experience operating in highly regulated or mission-critical environments

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive salary ranging from $100,000 - $250,000 based on experience
• Market-competitive equity compensation
• Full suite of health and wellness benefits
• Learning and development opportunities
• The opportunity to directly contribute to technology with meaningful global impact

Other Notes

• This role is not focused on hardware/firmware development, but rather on low-level software that interacts closely with systems and infrastructure layers
• Strong emphasis is placed on autonomy, impact, and breadth of technical expertise
• Team values a multidisciplinary mindset and welcomes engineers who can wear multiple hats

Join a team that's solving the toughest software problems in defense, national security, and critical infrastructure. Apply now to work with some of the brightest engineers in the industry-and build technology that truly matters.