Software Engineer

Authorium

📍San Francisco, CA
Posted May 22, 2026

Job Overview

Position

Software Engineer

Company

Authorium

Location

San Francisco, CA

Work Type

On-site

Job ID

li-4414066946

Job Description

About Authorium
Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We are a GovTech SaaS platform that unifies the massive, complex workflows—procurement, grants, and budgeting—that keep state and local governments running.

Our platform replaces fragmented spreadsheets and decades-old legacy systems with a unified data layer that manages billions of dollars in public funds. We serve the agencies that support millions of citizens, including California’s CDSS, CalPERS, and EDD, as well as major state agencies in Florida and Washington.

The Business: We are a 43-person company growing 45% YoY, with a clear path to profitability by Q4 2026. We have deep product market fit and are scaling to meet the demands of the world's most complex government agencies.

Why This Role Exists

We are establishing our San Francisco office as a strategic center for high-bandwidth engineering and product innovation. This is a foundational role for an engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative environment and wants to accelerate their career by being "in the room" where our most complex architectural decisions are made.

While Authorium is a distributed company, our SF office is where we tackle our most intricate "war room" challenges—from modularizing our core domain to whiteboarding the next generation of our workflow engine. You will be a key contributor to the technical integrity of our platform, shipping mission-critical features and collaborating daily with a high-caliber team to power our next major phase of expansion.

What You Will Be Doing

  • Shipping Core Features: Deliver complex, high-impact features across our platform—from building robust versioning systems to designing intricate approval workflows and permission models.

  • Technical Evolution: Participate in architectural decisions that scale across multiple customer configurations. You’ll contribute to ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) and help drive the modularization of our core domain.

  • High-Bandwidth Collaboration: Work in-person (Monday–Thursday) in our SF office to whiteboard solutions, debug production bottlenecks, and move from idea to deployment at high velocity.

  • Engineering Craft: Uphold a high bar for technical excellence. You’ll engage in deep, architectural code reviews and contribute to the advancement of our automated quality gates.

  • AI-Native Workflow: Leverage Cursor and Claude to offload boilerplate and focus on complex implementation. You’ll help refine our AI-first patterns—including agentic testing and automated reviews—ensuring the team operates at maximum leverage.

Must Have

  • 3+ years of professional full-stack experience. We value deep engineering fundamentals—system design, database optimization, and clean architecture—over fluency in any specific syntax.

  • Systems Thinker: A demonstrated ability to understand and contribute to complex domain objects and data models in production environments.

  • High-Agency: You don’t wait for a perfectly groomed ticket. You are comfortable partnering with product managers to turn ambiguous requirements into elegant technical specs.

  • Security Minded: You treat security as a core engineering discipline. You have a strong working knowledge of defensive coding practices and the authorization models required to protect sensitive data.

  • Quality Obsessed: A history of writing clean, maintainable code with comprehensive testing. You take pride in your PR history and believe that "done" includes documentation and observability.

  • San Francisco Based: Energized by an in-office (Monday–Thursday) collaborative culture.

Nice to Have

  • Ruby on Rails Proficiency: Strong knowledge of Rails conventions and an interest in (or experience with) modular monoliths.

  • Complex Document Infrastructure: Experience with document generation (PDFs), rich text editors, or building systems to process unstructured data within secure workflows.

  • Regulated Industry Experience: Previous work in compliance-heavy environments such as GovTech, FinTech, or HealthTech (FedRAMP, SOC 2, or HIPAA).

  • Infrastructure Curiosity: Experience with or a strong desire to learn AWS infrastructure (ECS/EKS, CloudWatch) and modern deployment pipelines.

  • Startup Veteran: Previous experience in a fast-growing startup ($5M–$30M ARR range) where you navigated rapid change and contributed to a scaling product.

Benefits

  • Salary: $148,750-$201,250

  • Offers equity

  • 100% benefits coverage for employee

  • 401(k) plan

  • Flexible PTO

  • Home office stipend

  • Comprehensive wellness benefits

  • Commuter stipend for hybrid roles

Compensation Range: $148,750 - $201,250

Interview Prep

AI-powered insights to help you prepare

Key Skills

Required:
Preferred:

Practice Questions

💡Technical Questions (3)
  • 1.How would you approach designing an intricate approval workflow and permission model for a GovTech platform managing billions in public funds?
  • 2.Authorium is moving toward a modular monolith architecture. How do you balance maintaining a unified data layer with enforcing strict domain boundaries in such a system?
  • 3.Given our AI-native workflow using tools like Cursor and Claude, how do you ensure code quality and security when leveraging AI to generate boilerplate or implement complex features?
🎯Behavioral Questions (3)
  • 1.Tell me about a time you didn't wait for a perfectly groomed ticket and took high agency to turn ambiguous requirements into a concrete technical spec.
  • 2.Describe a situation where you had to debug a critical production bottleneck under pressure. How did you collaborate with your team to resolve it?
  • 3.Tell me about a time you advocated for a significant architectural change or technical evolution in a codebase you were working on.
🧩Situational Questions (2)
  • 1.You are tasked with building a robust versioning system for complex government documents, but you realize the initial requirements don't account for concurrent edits by multiple agency users. What do you do?
  • 2.During an in-office whiteboarding session, you and another senior engineer fundamentally disagree on how to modularize a core domain object—specifically, whether to split the database tables now or refactor the application logic first. How do you resolve this?

Resume Keywords

Make sure these keywords appear on your resume

Full-StackSystem DesignModular MonolithRuby on RailsAuthorization ModelsArchitecture Decision RecordsDatabase OptimizationAutomated TestingDocument GenerationAI-Assisted DevelopmentHigh-AgencyGovTech

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