Job Description
About ngrok Inc.
ngrok is an all-in-one cloud networking platform that secures, transforms, and routes traffic to services running anywhere. Instead of cobbling together nginx, NLBs, VPNs, model routers, and oodles of other tools, developers solve every networking problem with one gateway. Doesn’t matter if they’re sharing localhost or running AI workloads in production.
We’re trusted by more than 9 million developers at companies like GitHub, Okta, HashiCorp, and Twilio. What started as a way to put your local app on a public URL has grown into a universal gateway for API delivery, AI inference, device fleets, and site-to-site connectivity. It’s the same ngrok that millions of developers have loved and leaned on every day for years, now with the power to run production traffic at scale.
A few things you should know:
- We are obsessed with our pets, Viper sunglasses and Bufo (yes, the toad)
- We have a designated Chief Emoji Officer - they are vital to our success!
- We like software that’s serious and culture that’s not
Still reading? Good. There’s more below worth your time.
About the Team
This role will lead either our Gateway or Agent team, depending on your experience and interests.
Both teams sit on the critical path of every ngrok connection and are central to our reliability, performance, and customer trust.
- Gateway Team: Owns the core infrastructure that handles and shapes all traffic flowing through ngrok—routing, security enforcement, rate limiting, and observability. Every request passes through this layer, and its correctness and performance are foundational to everything we do.
- Agent Team: Builds the software that runs on the customer side of every connection. The Agent is what developers install and trust to securely expose their systems to the internet, and it must perform reliably across unpredictable, real-world environments.
What You’ll Actually Do
Lead a team that ships and learns quickly
You’ll manage and coach a team of 5–7 engineers. The goal isn’t just shipping—it’s building a team that can consistently make good decisions, move fast, and improve over time.
Treat management like a systems problem (with humans in the loop)
You’ll design how your team works: planning, execution, retros, feedback loops, and decision-making. You’ll tune the system, not just react to it.
Stay close enough to the code to matter
You won’t be coding every day, but you’ll get into the details when needed—reviewing designs, debugging tricky issues, and helping the team make better technical tradeoffs.
Drive product and technical direction together
This isn’t “just execution.” You’ll help shape what the team builds—balancing product work, technical investments, and experiments that actually teach you something.
Build a team people want to be on
You’ll coach junior and senior engineers, create psychological safety, and raise the bar on both performance and collaboration.
Connect the team to the bigger picture
You’ll make sure your team understands how their work ties to ngrok’s product, customers, and business. Context isn’t optional here. You’ll work closely with senior leadership and functional orgs to shape and meaningfully impact company culture and roadmap.
You Might Be a Great Fit If…
- You’ve spent 5+ years as a software engineer and comfortable in Go, Rust, Java, or C/C++
- You have 4+ years of engineering leadership experience
- You think in systems—whether that’s distributed systems or team dynamics
- You’re comfortable zooming in (code, debugging) and zooming out (strategy, org design)
- You’ve built things from scratch—teams, processes, or products
- You communicate clearly, directly, and without unnecessary fluff
Bonus points if you’ve:
- Contributed to open source, blogs, or conferences
- Worked in developer tools or product-led growth environments
- Built teams in ambiguous, early-stage contexts
Tech Stack
ngrok runs entirely on AWS. Engineers develop by using remote development tools and/or ssh to connect to remote EC2 environments that run a full Kubernetes cluster of the ngrok stack, closely mirroring production. The codebase is primarily Go and TypeScript. We use Postgres for persistence, Kafka for streaming, Protobuf for service boundaries, and Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, and Buildkite to operate and ship reliably. React is used for user interfaces, and GitHub supports our development workflows and remembers everything.
Location
This is a remote position for candidates outside of the Bay Area and a hybrid role for candidates within commuting distance to San Francisco. Our Bay Area employees commute to the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Sponsorship
All candidates must be US-based, and legally authorized to work in the United States.
At this time, ngrok is unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a permanent, ongoing basis without the need for current or future sponsorship.
Compensation
Job Title
- Tier 1 (SF, LA, Seattle, NYC): $225,000 – $275,000
- Tier 2 (rest of US): $207,000 – $253,000
Job level and actual compensation will be evaluated based on factors including, but not limited to, qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), internal equity with other team members, market data, and specific work location. We provide an attractive mix of salary and equity.
#LI-Remote
Full Time Employee Benefits
- Health stuff that actually matters. Full premiums covered on base healthcare, dental, and vision for you. Half covered for your dependents. Mental health and well-being support included, because taking care of your brain is as important as taking care of your teeth.
- Retirement matching that doesn’t suck. 401(k) with 100% match up to 3% of your salary and 50% match up to another 2%. Future you will appreciate present you.
- Actually flexible time off. We say “open, flexible vacation policy” and actually mean it. Take the time you need. Your manager will bug you if you’re not taking enough.
- Parental leave that’s realistic. Up to 16 weeks if you give birth, up to 8 weeks for new parents (birth, adoption, fostering—however your family grows).
- Money to keep growing. Annual professional development budget for books, courses, conferences, or whatever helps you level up. Plus an annual home office/desk stipend to make your workspace not terrible.
- Work from wherever. Co-working space stipend if you want to get out of your house but aren’t near our SF office.
- Lunch on us. 2x+ per week for employees onsite at our San Francisco office. Free food tastes better.
- Company offsites. Twice a year we get the whole team together. It’s part strategy, part bonding, part excuse to hang out with Bufo (the toad).
- Regular feedback and fair compensation. Bi-annual reviews to make sure you’re getting real feedback and staying competitively compensated. No surprises, no waiting around for performance conversations.
