Senior Software Engineer (Rails / Next.js / AWS GovCloud)

FutureFeed — Compliance SaaS for the Defense Industrial Base

Please only apply if you’re a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident currently residing in the U.S.

Final round in-person in Baltimore, MD (all travel covered) — required

Proceed only if you are willing to supply a prototype. Read the rest of the application for details.

About FutureFeed

FutureFeed (built by Continuous Compliance LLC) is the compliance platform organizations use to safeguard U.S. government–sensitive information. Founded in 2019, we serve over 1,200 clients ranging from Fortune 100 companies to top IT and cybersecurity service providers and small-to-medium businesses across regulated industries. We run on AWS GovCloud, and our customers — engineers, security officers, and CISOs at organizations whose contracts depend on accurate, defensible compliance evidence — rely on us to get it right.

The role

We’re hiring a senior engineer to build features end-to-end across our Rails/PostgreSQL backend, our React and Next.js frontends, and our AWS GovCloud infrastructure. This is a hands-on role: you’ll work directly with a small, senior team, write production code daily, and contribute meaningfully to architecture, tooling, and how we ship.

Our stack

• Ruby on Rails + PostgreSQL (with pgvector)

• React and Next.js on the frontend

• AWS GovCloud: ECS, Lambda, S3, SQS, Bedrock, Redis

• Microsoft Graph integrations (Intune, Defender, Entra) for evidence collection

• Compliance frameworks: CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, FedRAMP

How we work with AI tools

We use AI tools heavily — across our development workflow, in our product, and in our recruiting pipeline. We expect engineers to be fluent with these tools and faster because of them. Our take-home exercise is built around AI-assisted work: use whatever tooling you’d use on a normal day.

We don’t allow AI tools during interviews, though, and the reason isn’t that we distrust them — we use them every day. It’s that interviews are where we meet you. We’ve sat across the table from candidates whose every answer was piped through a chatbot, and at the end of the hour we couldn’t tell who we’d been talking to. We don’t want an augmented personality — we want the real person. How you think. How you respond when you don’t know something. How you handle being stuck. So during interviews, AI tools are off.

Vibe coding doesn’t ship at FutureFeed either. If an AI tool writes code you can’t explain, can’t debug, and can’t reason about, that code doesn’t go in. We want engineers who understand:

• Why a Rails query is slow and how to actually fix it

• What’s happening at the network layer when an ECS task can’t reach RDS

• When a Lambda cold start matters and when it doesn’t

• Why an LLM output drifted and how to catch it next time

If “I asked the AI and it worked” is a complete answer for you, this isn’t the right role. If “the AI proposed this, I checked it against the indexes, the EXPLAIN plan, and the existing query patterns, here’s why I’m shipping it” is how you talk about your work — read on.

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years building production web applications, with at least 3 years in Ruby on Rails. Strong frontend experience in React, Next.js, or both. At this level we expect deep expertise in your primary part of the stack — you don’t have to know every layer, but the layers you own, you should own thoroughly.

• Real database fluency: query plans, indexing, transactions, migrations on live systems

• AWS production experience (any region; GovCloud is a plus, not a prerequisite)

• Ability to debug across the stack — frontend network errors, backend N+1s, container networking, IAM

• Comfort working with AI coding tools as a force multiplier and explaining every decision they help you make

• Strong written communication — async-first team, decisions live in tickets and PRs

Nice to have

• Microsoft Graph integrations (Intune, Defender, Entra) — much of our compliance evidence collection runs through Graph

• AWS GovCloud, ECS, Bedrock production experience

• Background in compliance, security, or regulated SaaS

• Familiarity with CMMC, NIST 800-171, or FedRAMP

Eligibility

This role requires a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident (green-card holder) residing in the United States, due to federal-data handling rules. Proof will be requested. Employment is contingent on a background check.

A note on recruiters

We are not working with external recruiters or placement agencies. Agency outreach will result in being placed on our banned list.

Compensation & benefits

• Salary: $125,000 – $175,000 per year, depending on experience

• Location: Remote within the U.S., with travel to Baltimore for the final interview and periodic team gatherings

• Benefits:

  • 401(k)

  • Comprehensive health, vision & dental coverage

  • Mobile phone and home internet stipends

  • Annual weeklong company retreat

  • $2,500 annual training allowance

  • One domestic economy roundtrip ticket on Delta or Southwest for personal use

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion.

Hiring process

After the trial task, the process is: a CV review, a single engineering interview, a reference check, and an in-person final day with our CEO in Baltimore, MD — we cover travel, lodging, and meals. The Baltimore final is a hard requirement: The engineers we hire become part of how this company runs, and we want to spend time in the same room with you before making that call.

How to apply

We don’t open with résumés. We open with the work. There are two steps and the order matters:

1. Build something. Go to https://apply-engineering.futurefeed.co, follow the prompts to start a trial task, and engage with our virtual Product Manager to scope and ship a clickable HTML prototype at a public URL. There’s no stack constraint — we want to see how you handle ambiguity.

2. Then send the CV. Once your prototype is live, use the apply form on this page and paste your prototype URL into the application. We only review applications that include a prototype URL.

If your prototype clears our bar, then we read the CV and reach out to schedule the engineering interview. Most candidates won’t get past the prototype step, and that’s by design — every CV we read is one that’s already earned the read.

Please only apply if you’re a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident currently residing in the U.S.

No cover letters. Prototype first, CV second. No recruiters.

DO NOT APPLY UNLESS YOU HAVE A PROTOTYPE. YOU WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY DISQUALIFIED.