Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

Lanai is building the Enterprise AI Navigation System to solve one of today's most critical challenges: Enterprises can't see, protect, or scale their AI usage. Unlike traditional tools that rely on static APIs or manual configurations, our AI Empowerment Platform dynamically discovers every human-AI interaction, protects sensitive data, and transforms scattered experiments into systematic success.

At Lanai, we're not just building software; we're crafting a culture of excellence and innovation. Our values shape our work:

• Curiosity: We continuously learn, question, and share knowledge.

• Community: We embrace diversity and unite in purpose.

• Commitment: We maintain high standards and follow through on our promises.

• Clarity: We communicate openly and make decisions efficiently.

We move fast, prioritize delivering true customer value, and strive to earn and maintain trust with the people we serve and each other. As part of Lanai’s founding team, you'll embody these values and help shape the future of work in the AI era.

About the Team

At Lanai, we are passionate builders, relentless customer champions, and lifelong learners who believe we do our best work when we have a team that represents the diversity of the customers we serve and everyone feels welcome, safe, valued and championed. We are harnessing the power of state-of-the-art AI tools to build our platform, and we are committed to taming the complexity needed to help others benefit from all that these tools have to offer.

We're a tight-knit group of curious engineers who love to solve complex problems with solutions that make a real difference for our users. We’re leveraging the most modern development tools and practices to ensure a productive and fun environment where everyone is inspired to do their best work. We don't just build 'good enough' – we obsess over the details that create genuinely delightful experiences. We’re building a thoughtful environment where curiosity thrives and bringing your authentic selves to everything is a given.

As a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer at Lanai, you'll play a pivotal role in delivering a modern, distributed, cloud-native service fabric. This fabric will ensure Lanai can scale arbitrarily to meet rapidly growing customer demand across multiple cloud providers. Our platform will manage and secure millions of AI-powered interactions and workflows for large companies globally. We provide comprehensive visibility, robust safety measures, and productivity-enhancing features to help enterprises harness the power of generative AI efficiently and safely.

• Lead the approach to scalability, reliability, service health, supportability, observability, and manageability of the product

• Build scalable and performant multi-tenant data processing and storage systems that run in hybrid environments. 

• Collaborate with ML engineers to build, deploy and interface with AI classification and recommendation models.

• As a domain expert, understand the state of the art, analyze competitive product designs, and stay familiar with best practices in distributed services

• Develop and champion new ideas and innovations

• Make company-wide contributions with long-term impact

• Serve as a key decision-maker on technical and business issues that significantly influence roles and responsibilities across the organization

• Regularly venture into uncharted territory. Stay aware of business trends and emerging technologies—even outside our current focus—and determine how to leverage them for Lanai's advantage

• 6+ years of experience building large scale distributed, fault-tolerant services using Kafka, Redis, Etcd or similar.

• Strong experience with database fundamentals and cloud storage technologies, including working with relational data, semi-structured data, and unstructured data

• Strong systems programming skills including multi-threading, concurrency, transactions, caching, batching, etc.

• Fluency in Java and C++ or GoLang required

• Deep understanding Kubernetes and containerization principles

• Strong experience with service-oriented micro-service architectures

• Track record of identifying and implementing creative solutions

• Experience with cloud infrastructure - AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud

• Masters or PhD in Computer Science or a related field

• Founding equity options

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• 401(k)

• Unlimited PTO

• Your choice of tech!

• Commuter benefits

• Team building events

Lanai is based in Palo Alto and we co-create in our office, together, most of the time. We have a regular in-office cadence for team connection and brainstorming sessions, with the flexibility for remote work the rest of the time. We use the best collaboration tools, schedule regular off-sites, and plan for team bonding experiences.

We're committed to providing equal treatment and opportunity to all applicants throughout the hiring process and their tenure at Lanai. We don't discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age, disability, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected status.

Note: Research shows that men often apply for jobs when they meet only about 60% of the qualifications, while women and other marginalized groups tend to hesitate unless they meet all criteria. If you don't match 100% of the job qualifications but believe you'd be a great fit, we strongly encourage you to apply!