Software Engineer

About Valarian Technologies

Valarian Technologies develops dual-use technologies to address evolving global security threats beyond traditional military domains. Their flagship product is Acra, a secure, infrastructure-agnostic platform named after the Greek word for fortress, designed to protect critical data and support government and commercial workflows such as mission-critical system resilience, emerging technology adoption, disaster response communication, and zero-trust environments.

Role Overview

As a Software Engineer, you will contribute to building and maintaining backend and platform services for Acra, a secure Kubernetes-based platform that handles controlled compute, data governance, and AI-driven security operations. The role focuses on developing scalable, reliable, and secure systems primarily using Go, and involves working within a collaborative engineering team that embraces ownership and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop backend services, APIs, and platform components using Go.
• Manage the full lifecycle of services from design and implementation to testing, deployment, and production monitoring.
• Utilize technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, and secrets management.
• Implement platform capabilities including workload isolation, policy enforcement, audit logging, and identity-aware communication.
• Design event-driven distributed systems to ensure resilience and scalability.
• Enhance observability through metrics, logging, tracing, and support effective incident response.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to translate requirements into technical solutions.
• Take ownership of specific platform areas, contributing independently to development and improvement.
• Refine team processes for code review, change deployment, and learning from incidents.

Qualifications and Experience

• Experience in backend development with exposure to Go programming.
• Development of APIs, backend services, or microservices.
• Familiarity with Docker and container technologies.
• Experience working with or building on Kubernetes platforms.
• Understanding of continuous integration and continuous deployment workflows.
• Knowledge of GitOps practices, Argo, container registries, secrets management, and deployment security.
• Experience with event-driven architectures, asynchronous process workflows, or distributed systems.
• Competence in system design focused on reliability, scalability, observability, and failure handling.
• Strong debugging skills across applications, services, and infrastructure.
• A proactive attitude toward understanding platform purpose beyond mere implementation.
• Ownership mindset, curiosity, and ability to work independently.
• Eagerness to broaden expertise across backend, platform infrastructure, and DevOps domains.

Preferred Additional Skills

• Experience within security-sensitive or regulated sectors such as defence, government, fintech, healthcare, critical infrastructure, or sovereign cloud.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes security including zero trust, workload isolation, identity-aware systems, network policies, service mesh, or policy enforcement.
• Best practices in platform security like secrets management, supply chain security, admission control, auditability, and operational evidence.
• Experience with observability and operations—metrics, logging, tracing, alerting, incident response, and troubleshooting live production environments.
• Work experience in startups or roles demanding broad ownership across platform, infrastructure, or product engineering.

Benefits

• Equity ownership opportunities in the company.
• A competitive salary package recognizing individual skills.
• Employer pension contributions for long-term financial security.
• Private health insurance coverage.
• A hybrid working arrangement to accommodate individual needs.
• Company retreats and team meetups that respect work-life balance.

Culture and Values

Valarian fosters a culture of inclusivity, compassion, and flexibility with a commitment to employee empowerment and goal achievement. The organization values the energy and trust created by in-person collaboration, adopting a hybrid working model with three days a week in the London office.

Diversity and Fair Hiring

The company is an equal opportunity employer welcoming applicants regardless of demographic characteristics. Hiring decisions are based solely on qualifications, skills, and relevant experience. AI tools may assist in application processing but do not replace human decision-making.

Work Location

London, England, United Kingdom (Onsite)