Staff Software Engineer (Rust) - Confidential Computing Infrastructure

Location: Santa Clara, California, United States

Department: ENG

Workplace: hybrid

Employment Type: full

Description

About Us

At Fortanix we are pioneers in confidential computing and Confidential AI for hybrid and multicloud environments. We build technologies that protect sensitive data while it is in use -combining trusted execution environments (TEEs), advanced cryptography, and hardware-based isolation to secure applications, AI models, and data across clouds, on-premises infrastructure, and devices.

Our platform enables organizations to run and manage confidential workloads and AI, reduce data exposure risk, and adopt Zero Trust architectures with strong runtime protections. We partner closely with leading cloud and silicon providers and bring together experts in cryptography, systems, and distributed computing to solve some of the most challenging problems in protecting data in use.

We foster a collaborative, research-driven culture focused on advancing the state of the art in confidential computing and Confidential AI, enabling organizations to unlock the value of sensitive data while preserving privacy and security.


The Role

Staff Software Engineer (Rust) - Confidential Computing Infrastructure

We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer (Rust) to join our Confidential Computing Management team - the group responsible for designing, building, and operating the confidential computing infrastructure that secures our Generative AI platform.

This is a deeply hands-on role focused on building Rust services and infrastructure that run inside and around trusted execution environments (Intel SGX, Intel TDX, AMD SEV) across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. You’ll shape the architecture of a platform that enables secure, confidential AI workloads at scale.

Location: Santa Clara (CA)

What you’ll do

• Design and build Rust-based platform and infrastructure services for confidential computing environments
• Design and implement services that execute inside TEEs and integrate attestation, sealing, and confidential workload orchestration
• Architect and evolve our confidential computing infrastructure across hybrid and multi-cloud environments
• Build and operate Kubernetes-based confidential workload platforms
• Improve platform reliability, scalability, performance, and security posture
• Define infrastructure architecture and influence cross-team technical direction
• Mentor engineers in Rust, distributed systems, and confidential computing practices
• Drive production excellence: observability, resilience, deployment, and capacity planning

What you’ll work on

You will design, implement, and operate systems such as:

• Enclave-resident Rust services and supporting control-plane infrastructure
• Rust infrastructure services for confidential workload orchestration
• Secure scheduling, attestation, and key-management services
• Kubernetes operators and controllers for confidential workloads
• Confidential runtime and Runtime Encryption® components (SGX/TDX/SEV)
• Hybrid/multi-cloud deployment and isolation infrastructure
• High-assurance services requiring strong isolation and memory safety

Requirements

Required experience

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• 3–5+ years of production Rust in systems, backend, or infrastructure
• Strong experience building and operating distributed systems or platform infrastructure
• Production Kubernetes experience (operators/controllers strongly valued)
• Strong Linux systems programming and debugging skills
• Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• CI/CD and production deployment pipelines
• Experience with distributed data stores (e.g., Cassandra, MongoDB, etc.)

Strongly preferred

• Hands-on confidential computing / TEE development (Intel SGX, Intel TDX, AMD SEV, Nitro Enclaves, etc.)
• Experience building or operating enclave or confidential workload platforms
• Rust performance-sensitive systems (async, networking, storage, runtime)
• Platform architecture ownership at scale
• Observability and reliability engineering for distributed platforms

Nice to have

• Secure or privacy-preserving AI infrastructure
• Experience deploying AI/ML workloads on Kubernetes
• Multi-tenant or regulated cloud environments

What we value

• Infrastructure and platform ownership mindset
• Security-first engineering
• Pragmatic, high-quality Rust systems development
• Mentorship and technical leadership
• Reliability and operational excellence

Benefits

• We offer a collaborative work environment, amazing equity, great benefits, competitive salary, and the opportunity to redefine cloud computing.  

• Unlimited PTO (it’s between you and your work!)
• 40 hours of Volunteer Time Off/year 
• Internet stipend 

• Friendly culture that brings the best out of everybody 
• 401k

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire.

For this role, candidates must have a minimum of 24 months of current U.S. work authorization remaining without the need for employer sponsorship.

We are able to support H-1B transfers for candidates already in H-1B status and may consider sponsorship for candidates currently in the United States on F-1 or J-1 status. We are not initiating new visa sponsorships for candidates who would require entry into the H-1B lottery from outside the United States.