Software Engineer (Edge - Devices & Mobile)

Zyte is a remote-first company specializing in large-scale web data extraction, solving some of the internet’s most complex data collection challenges. Our globally distributed team of over 260 professionals across 33 countries is passionate about delivering clean, reliable web data to power competitive intelligence, analytics, and AI models. We emphasize engineering excellence, thoughtful system design, and ownership of a profitable, industry-leading platform. Our Edge Platform squad manages a unique stack that includes a Rust-based peer runtime running on residential devices, enabling data fetching that mimics real human traffic. As we expand from Windows into Android, Linux, and soon macOS, we are seeking a skilled Rust engineer to lead the development and smooth operation of this cross-platform peer runtime.

Key Responsibilities
- Take ownership of the Rust peer runtime across Windows, Android, Linux, and macOS, managing process lifecycles, background tasks, networking, automatic updates, and ensuring stability on unmanaged hardware.
- Port the peer runtime to Android using NDK/JNI, addressing challenges like foreground services, battery optimization, and mobile network behavior to integrate real and emulated device farms.
- Develop and maintain clean, well-tested Rust libraries that interface with Chromium’s network stack (Cronet) and browserless HTTP clients through FFI, ensuring safe runtime contracts.
- Collect and analyze hardware and OS-level reconnaissance data from the device fleet, mapping TCP/TLS/HTTP fingerprints to support Browser and Antiban teams in maintaining realistic emulation.
- Build detailed per-device metrics covering uptime, drop-off rates, bandwidth, and success rates to ensure transparency and accountability within the fleet.
- Expand peer capabilities to support new tasks such as captcha solving and browser rendering, while maintaining strong security isolation from untrusted pages and hosts.
- Participate in on-call rotations, conduct post-mortems, and translate operational insights into software and deployment improvements.
- Contribute to raising engineering standards by authoring Requests for Discussion (RFDs), reviewing architectural designs, and setting best practices for cross-platform Rust development at Zyte.

Required Qualifications
- Minimum of 5 years of production experience with Rust, demonstrating a track record of shipping and maintaining software end-to-end.
- Proven expertise in cross-platform Rust development, having shipped code on at least two platforms among Windows, macOS, or Android, with at least one involving mobile platforms.
- Strong proficiency with FFI, including interfacing Rust with C/C++ libraries and native OS APIs (JNI/NDK, Win32, POSIX), managing memory ownership, lifetimes, and cross-language threading.
- Deep understanding of networking protocols such as TCP, TLS, and HTTP at the packet level, with the ability to analyze network traffic and client fingerprinting.
- Reliability-focused mindset with experience instrumenting software, monitoring fleet health remotely, and maintaining operational excellence during on-call duties.
- Security-conscious approach to software design, especially when running code on third-party devices requiring high trust and defensive programming.
- Excellent written communication skills suited for a distributed, remote-first environment.
- Strong curiosity and passion for reverse engineering protocols, exploring binaries, and understanding complex systems at a low level.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits
Preferred experience includes working with residential networks, proxy or peer-to-peer applications, browser internals (Chromium, Cronet, Firefox networking), distributed systems design, and large-scale web scraping. Contributions to open-source Rust, networking, or mobile projects are a plus.

By joining Zyte, you will become part of a self-motivated, multicultural team that values autonomy and flexibility. You will have the freedom to work from anywhere, attend global conferences, and collaborate with talented engineers worldwide. The role offers the opportunity to work with cutting-edge open-source technologies and solve challenging problems at the intersection of AI and web data collection. If you are a Rust engineer passionate about building reliable software across diverse platforms and unpredictable hardware, Zyte offers a unique environment to grow and make a significant impact.