Lead Rust Engineer

Helsinki, Finland · Product and engineering · Full-Time · Remote

One position · Finland or Sweden · Remote-first · Rust in production, not on the roadmap

You've spent years getting good at Rust. You've also spent years explaining to employers why it matters, or writing it in a corner of a codebase nobody else touches.

Here it's the whole codebase. The gateway, the policy engine, the security pipeline. All of it.

Roder is an AI security and governance platform: a high-performance Layer 7 gateway that sits between organizations and every AI model and agent they use. Real-time threat detection, prompt injection prevention, identity and access control, data sovereignty enforcement, full audit trails. The security layer enterprises need before they can trust AI at scale.

The entire backend is Rust. Not a rewrite project, not an experiment. It's what runs in production for regulated European customers today, and it's what you'll own.

The Role in a Nutshell

• Permanent position, starting as soon as we find the right person
• Remote-first, work from anywhere in Finland or Sweden. We meet in person occasionally, not constantly. When we do, we expect you there.
• Lead-level ownership. You'll shape the Rust architecture, set the standard for the codebase, and mentor engineers who join after you. If you want the lead title and the responsibility that comes with it, it's here. If you'd rather be a deep senior IC without the title, that works too.
• Salary, competitive and based on experience. We won't win on pure salary against the big consulting factories, but we offer something they never will: a genuine stake in what we're building.
• Equity. Every employee joins our stock option program after settling into their role. We have massive ambitions, and this is a rare chance to become a true part of Roder and share in what we build.

What You'll Be Working On

• Owning and evolving our Rust backend: a cargo workspace powering a high-throughput, low-latency AI security gateway in production
• Performance-critical proxy work: async Rust, Layer 7 routing, streaming, connection handling, multi-provider AI routing, rate limiting
• Security engineering in the hot path: prompt injection detection, PII scanning, policy enforcement, output filtering, all under strict latency budgets
• Protocol work: MCP, OAuth/OIDC, token binding, agent identity. This is where the industry is heading and we're already there.
• Setting engineering standards: code review culture, API design, testing strategy, how we structure the workspace as the team grows
• Driving our agentic development practices. We build with AI agents, we automate aggressively, and we expect you to push this forward, not tolerate it.

Who You Are

You must have:

• Strong production Rust experience. You've shipped and operated real Rust systems, not just side projects. You know async Rust, you have opinions about error handling, and you can explain a design tradeoff without reaching for a framework's defaults.
• Proven senior-level engineering experience overall. Systems that real people depend on.
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals: proxies, gateways, API security, protocols
• Comfort with Kubernetes and containerized deployment
• EU residency and eligibility to work in Finland or Sweden

You're the right fit if you:

• Have worked on performance-sensitive services and know how to measure before optimizing
• Care about security engineering, or want to go deep on it with real attacker-facing problems
• Use AI tools as a natural part of how you work: not a gimmick, not a crutch, a genuine force multiplier
• Want to set direction, not just receive it
• Prefer shipping over meetings

This is not for you if:

• You believe the future of software development looks like the last 10 years
• You want a clear org chart to know whose approval you need
• "Remote-first" to you means never meeting your teammates under any circumstances

What We Offer

Compensation & Equity

• Competitive salary based on experience
• Stock option program, all employees, no exceptions, starting after probation. You're not joining a payroll, you're joining the founding team in spirit.

Growth & Learning, from day one

• Dedicated time for learning, R&D, and personal development, built into your schedule from your first week. Not an empty promise; we actively make sure it happens.

How We Work

• Remote-first: your best work environment is your work environment
• Occasional in-person meetups (we're a small team, it's rare but real)
• Flat organization. Founders have deep experience across IT, software, and security. Everyone's ideas get heard and processed. No idea goes into a black hole.

Tools & Setup

• Company laptop and equipment
• External monitor
• Company phone
• Internet covered
• Health services

About Roder

We build AI security infrastructure for organizations that can't afford to get AI governance wrong. Our platform controls, secures, and monitors every AI interaction, from prompt injection attacks to data exfiltration to compliance audit trails, through a single high-performance gateway.

We're a small, experienced team at the start of something significant. The AI governance problem is real, it's growing, and we're building the right solution at the right time.

The Process

We keep it simple and fast. We respect your time.

How to Apply: Submit an application introducing yourself. This is a key position with an exceptional stock option program rarely found elsewhere. We receive hundreds of applications, so make yours stand out.

In your message, highlight the concrete Rust systems you've built, your background, and specifically why you want this position and why your future lies at Roder. Include a tailored CV along with a GitHub profile, crates you've published, or other concrete examples of your Rust work.

Please note: We expect applications to demonstrate that you have carefully read this job description. Generic, mass-submitted applications and non-tailored CVs will not be considered.

1. Online screening, quick survey
2. Intro call, 30 minutes, no coding puzzles, just a conversation
3. Technical discussion, we talk through real problems, architecture decisions, how you think
4. Meet the team, short and human

We review applications as they come in. The position fills when we find the right person.

We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds. If you have the experience and the mindset, we want to hear from you.

Originally posted on Himalayas