Go Core Client Engineer

Tailscale Tailscale · Enterprise · Remote · Engineering

This role is for a Go Core Client Engineer responsible for designing, implementing, and operating the Go-based shared client code that powers Tailscale's product. The engineer will work on core client subsystems like connection management, NAT traversal, and encrypted transport, focusing on shipping end-to-end features and improving reliability, performance, and observability.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design, implement, test, and maintain core client features in Go: connection orchestration, reconnection strategies, NAT traversal, encrypted transport lifecycle, and sync logic.
  2. Ship end-to-end client work: design, implementation, launch, and observability (metrics, logs, traces).
  3. Diagnose and reduce client performance and reliability issues.
  4. Collaborate closely with product, per-platform clients, and platform teams.
  5. Champion engineering excellence by driving code quality, architectural reviews, and design documentation.

Skills

Required

  • Go
  • production experience
  • shipping code
  • operating large codebases
  • client systems design
  • distributed systems design

Nice to have

  • concurrency
  • performance tuning
  • debugging
  • networking fundamentals
  • systems fundamentals
  • IP
  • routing
  • NATs
  • TCP/UDP
  • TLS
  • P2P
  • WireGuard
  • encrypted transports
  • NAT traversal techniques

What the JD emphasized

  • Go code is required
  • production experience
  • shipping Go code
  • operating large Go codebases
  • designing robust client or distributed systems