The Founding Engineer will lead the development of a cybersecurity platform for industrial infrastructure, requiring broad software engineering skills, a builder mentality, and customer engagement.
Ironloop is a cybersecurity platform for industrial infrastructure: power grids, water systems, manufacturing lines, defense supply chains. These environments run on control systems that were designed before cybersecurity was a concern and operate continuously with zero tolerance for downtime.
You should have
- 3-8 years of software engineering experience with strong fundamentals in systems architecture, networking, and software design
- A builder mentality. You've built something from scratch before, as a founder, an early employee, or the person who led a new project inside a larger company. You know what it means to turn a vague problem into a working product.
- Generalist range. You're comfortable debugging a backend service, writing frontend code, parsing protocols, and shipping infrastructure in the same week.
- Ownership. There's no playbook. You learn on the fly, care deeply about the outcome, and treat the product like it's yours.
- Customer instinct. You'll join customer calls, visit sites, and translate what operators need into engineering decisions. Communicating clearly with non-software people is essential.
- New York City presence. Based in or willing to relocate to NYC.
- Experience at an early-stage startup or a small, high-intensity team where you wore every hat
- Background in infrastructure, cybersecurity, defense tech, aerospace, or anything where software meets the physical world
- Depth in systems programming, networking, or embedded systems alongside strong product instincts
- Familiarity with on-premise or constrained deployment environments
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