Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

About Galaxy

Galaxy is an applied lab building bespoke context systems alongside ambitious teams. Successful AI deployments run on context that's governed, access-controlled, well-structured, and centrally managed. We help enterprises build and own that layer, because their knowledge is one of their most valuable assets.

We're open source first. Our flagship project is Filament, a fast, pluggable, Apache 2.0 data movement engine and the fastest benchmarked Postgres to Postgres replication engine in the world. Databases, APIs, event streams, and object storage all run through one pipeline. The big goal is an open source context management system any company can run and own.

We also work directly with customers, deploying production systems alongside their teams. Everything we open source is proven in real company environments first.

Galaxy was founded by Mitch Bregman and Leon Kozlowski, who have led large-scale, mission-critical infrastructure across Flock Safety, Bloomberg, Unify, and DARPA programs. The team includes architects of high-profile open source projects, including Wails, the popular Go desktop app framework. We're a small, focused team in New York, backed by Caffeinated, Bungalow, Crew, and Moonriver.

The Role

We're hiring a Forward Deployed Software Engineer to work across our customers and our core platform.

You'll split your time between the two. With customers, you'll learn their environments and what they're trying to accomplish, then get creative about solving their problems, whether that means applying our core products or building something bespoke alongside their team. Your job is to make them successful. On the platform side, you'll build the systems that power Galaxy, from new connectors and integrations to core features in our open source stack.

Each side makes you better at the other. Time with customers shows you what actually matters, and building the platform gives you the depth to solve their problems well. What you build for customers goes back into the core product, so your work reaches every team that uses Galaxy.

You'll work closely with the founders and get to know every part of the business, not just the code. We're a small team, so your work will make a real difference from the start. As Galaxy grows, we'd love for you to grow with it, and we hope this becomes a career-defining role for you.

You will…

• Build core features and integrations across our platform and open source stack

• Work with customers to understand their environments and goals, and solve their problems with our core products or bespoke builds

• Own projects end to end, from scoping with a customer to shipping and supporting what you built

• Make the systems you build fast, reliable, and well tested

• Debug and fix real issues in customer deployments

• Turn one-off customer solutions into reusable parts of the core product

• Bring what you learn from customers back to the team to shape what we build next

You have…

• 1 to 3 years of professional experience building and shipping software

• Strong fundamentals and a first principles approach

  • We care how you think, not which language you started with

• The ability to learn new languages and tools quickly

  • We mostly write Go and TypeScript

• Clear communication and the ability to turn a vague customer request into a concrete plan

• Interest in the whole business, not just the engineering

• Curiosity about why systems are fast or slow, working or broken

Bonus points if you…

• Enjoy customer-facing work and are open to occasional travel for on-site work

• Have built integrations with third-party APIs, databases, or SaaS tools

• Have written concurrent Go

• Have worked on distributed systems or databases

• Have contributed to open source

• Have used gRPC, ConnectRPC, Kubernetes, NATS, or Kafka

How we work

• Small team, real ownership. You'll ship to production early and own what you build.

• Open by default. Much of our code is public, and we hold it to the same bar as anything we sell.

• Close to customers. Engineers work directly with the people using what they build.

• AI-native, high bar. We use the best AI tools available, and we own every line that ships.

• Room to grow. You'll learn from engineers who have built data infrastructure at scale.

Details

• Location

  • Flexible, preferably NYC

• Compensation

  • $140,000-$180,000 plus meaningful early-stage equity

• Benefits

  • Health, dental, and vision coverage

  • Unlimited PTO

  • Your work setup, fully covered

  • Gym membership, fully covered