Founding Backend Engineer (Go) @ AI Identity Cybersecurity Venture, Berlin

This is an Atlantic portfolio venture. Find out more about us and other ventures in our portfolio here. 

About the Venture

We are a newly funded Berlin-based cybersecurity startup building a next-generation identity risk platform for modern enterprises.

Our mission is to help security leaders understand, measure, and reduce identity risk at scale. We turn complex identity and access data into clear, actionable insights - combining cloud-native architecture with AI-driven analysis and automated enforcement.

Founded by experienced cybersecurity leaders with backgrounds in intelligence units, we are building the foundation of a company designed to define how enterprises reason about identity risk in the AI era.

About the Role

We are hiring a Founding Backend Engineer (Go) to help design and build the core platform from the ground up.

This is a high-ownership, high-autonomy role. You will shape critical architectural decisions, define engineering standards, and build the backend systems that power our product. As one of the first engineers, your work will directly influence the company’s technical direction, culture, and long-term success.

This role is for somebody who thrives in early-stage environments, enjoys solving complex distributed systems challenges, and wants to build code that will be the foundation of an entire system. 

While your role will by nature be broad and diverse, below are some of the topics you will own: 

• Develop and maintain backend applications using Go, helping to power the core of the platform.

• Design and optimize cloud-based solutions on AWS, working with services like EC2, Lambda, S3, SQS, SNS and others to ensure scalability and reliability.

• Design, use and manage databases including PostgreSQL, Neo4J, Redis and Elasticsearch, ensuring data is structured, accessible and performant.

• Develop, manage and optimize containerized applications using Docker to maintain consistency and streamline deployments.

• Automate processes using Bash and Python scripting to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.

• Optimize and maintain RESTful APIs, ensuring strong security, performance and reliability.

• Collaborate closely with frontend engineers, DevOps and the product team to deliver robust, thoughtful applications that meet real user needs.

• Monitor, debug and continuously improve backend performance, reliability and scalability.

• Implement caching strategies, messaging queues and event-driven architectures where appropriate to support a modern, resilient system.

• Build the whole platform from scratch, shaping the technical foundations from the ground up.

What we’re looking for

Core experience

• 5+ years of experience with Go, with a strong hands-on coding mindset and the ability to build systems from scratch across different architectures.

• Experience designing and operating backend services in production SaaS environments, including RESTful and gRPC APIs (e.g. Gin), messaging systems such as SQS or Kafka, and end-to-end troubleshooting of live systems.

• Strong experience with containerized workloads using Docker and Kubernetes (EKS), alongside CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions or similar).

• Solid database experience, including PostgreSQL (RDS/Aurora), Neo4J or similar graph databases, and a practical understanding of performance and reliability in production.

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and cloud-native observability tooling such as Grafana, Prometheus and OpenTelemetry.
  
  

AI & emerging technologies

• Hands-on experience building with AI agents and LLM-based systems, including concepts such as RAG, prompts, embeddings, vector databases and MCP.

• Familiarity with modern AI stacks (e.g. AWS Bedrock, LangChain, pgvector or similar), and an interest in building secure, reliable AI-powered systems.

• Experience using coding copilots such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, AWS CodeWhisperer or Codex in day-to-day development workflows.
  
  

Security, identity & integrations

• Strong understanding of SaaS integrations and app-to-app permission flows.

• Practical knowledge of OAuth/OIDC, API tokens, SSO, SCIM, scopes, roles, RBAC/ABAC, service accounts and identity providers.

• Experience designing permission models, identity graphs or access control frameworks, with familiarity across IAM and cloud identity controls (e.g. AWS IAM, CloudTrail, Azure AD / Entra ID).

• Exposure to security architecture principles such as Zero Trust, least privilege and continuous verification, as well as monitoring or SIEM platforms (e.g. Splunk, Sentinel, QRadar).

• Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as NIS2, DORA, ISO 27001 or SOC 2.
  
  

Ways of working

• Experience in startup or scale-up environments, with high ownership, low ego and the ability to move quickly without compromising quality.

• Strong problem-solving skills and a collaborative mindset.
  Excellent English communication skills. German is a plus.
  
  

Nice to have

• Experience with Java and/or Python.

• Background in cybersecurity or identity-focused startups.

• Exposure to graph-based modelling (identity, access or risk graphs).

• Experience securing AI/LLM systems, agent logic or sandboxed environments — or a strong willingness to learn quickly in this space.

Why Join

As a founding team member, you’ll receive meaningful equity (ESOP), competitive market-aligned compensation, and real ownership from day one - with direct influence over the architecture, product, and overall direction of the company alongside deeply technical founders. Backed by fresh funding and a clear execution runway, you’ll build at the intersection of cybersecurity, identity, and AI from our central Berlin hub (hybrid setup), with high-quality equipment and regular team offsites to bring everyone together.