SDK Software Engineer at LaunchDarkly - Remote USA — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
This role is fully remote within the United States, which limits classic nomad flexibility — you must be US-based, and the team operates between Eastern and Pacific time zones (UTC-5 to UTC-8). This means a roughly 9am–6pm ET window is likely expected for overlap, making synchronous availability during US business hours important.
Timezone constraints are real: working from Europe or Asia would be impractical for sustained collaboration. However, within the US, the role suits engineers in any state — from a cabin in Montana to a co-living space in Austin or a beachside rental in Miami.
Visa considerations: This role requires US work authorization. Digital nomad visas from other countries (Portugal, Croatia, Mexico) would not apply here. US citizens or those with existing US work visas (H-1B, O-1, TN, Green Card) are the target audience.
Salary vs. cost of living: The Zone 3 band ($145,500–$200,090) is extremely competitive if you're based in a lower cost-of-living US city. For context:
- Austin, TX: Comfortable mid-range lifestyle at $70–90K; $145K+ puts you well into financial independence territory.
- Raleigh, NC or Boise, ID: Rent averages $1,400–$1,800/mo — your salary goes very far.
- Remote-friendly US hub cities like Tucson or Chattanooga offer even lower costs with good infrastructure.
Occasional travel to the Bay Area for team offsites adds a travel perk. No explicit coworking or equipment stipend is mentioned, but RSUs add meaningful total compensation upside.
About LaunchDarkly Engineering
LaunchDarkly helps engineering organizations ship software and AI with speed, safety, and control. Our platform gives teams the confidence to release gradually, target experiences to the right audiences, learn through experimentation, understand what is happening in production, and respond quickly when risk appears.
Our engineers build the systems, services, SDKs, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, and product experiences that make this possible. The work spans high-scale distributed systems, reliable data and event pipelines, intuitive enterprise workflows, and AI-powered capabilities that help teams manage the next generation of software delivery.
LaunchDarkly's SDKs are used in systems that perform trillions of feature flag evaluations each day, giving our engineering work a direct connection to the reliability and customer experience of software around the world. As the company grows, we are expanding beyond traditional feature management into experimentation, observability, and AgentControl—helping customers control more of the software and AI lifecycle.
We believe in the power of teams. We work with humility, openness, curiosity, and care; we value clear communication, thoughtful technical judgment, inclusive collaboration, and a strong sense of ownership. We encourage people to apply even when they do not meet every qualification listed below.
About the Job
As a Software Engineer on LaunchDarkly's SDK team, you will build the primary touchpoint that our customers interact with on a daily basis. You'll work with multiple technologies across our 35+ SDKs while enabling customers of all kinds to feature flag their code. Our SDKs are feature-rich agents with strong emphases on performance, concurrency, and resiliency — all while following idiomatic practices for their tech stack.
LaunchDarkly serves trillions of feature flags daily to customers all around the globe, and every flag is handled by our SDKs. This team has a major impact not only on our company, but on our customers (and their customers).
Responsibilities:
- Contribute to development for SDKs in supported platforms:
- Implement new features and improvements to meet customer performance and resiliency requirements
- Keep up to date with the latest development practices
- Collaborate with engineering and product teams to drive the implementation and release of major features
- Actively maintain open-source repositories
- Identify areas of improvement and advocate for best practices
- Have an active voice in shaping both technology and product decisions
Basic Qualifications:
- Demonstrable experience building libraries and packages used by other developers
- Polyglot background with an ability to context switch between languages quickly
- 5+ years experience with at least two of the following: .NET / Go / Ruby / Python / NodeJS / Java
- Experience with the following is a plus:
- C++ / Erlang / Haskell / Lua
- AI SDKs
- Observability SDKs
- Mobile development
- Strong computer science fundamentals
- Committed to working in a communicative, collaborative environment
- Self-starter and problem solver, willing to solve difficult problems and work independently when necessary
- Strong testing background: experience building unit, integration, load tests, and benchmarks
- Experience writing production-ready code with emphasis on quality and maintainability
- Experience contributing to open-source software
Logistics:
- This is a remote role, with opportunities to visit the office in the Bay Area, California, for team offsites
- The SDK team is spread between Eastern and Pacific time zones
Highlights:
- Work collaboratively with a team of highly experienced engineers who are amazing at the craft of engineering and building SDKs
- Your contributions will be publicly visible — the SDK team develops LaunchDarkly's open-source SDKs in public
- LaunchDarkly uses its own SDKs, giving you opportunities to work with other teams within the company
- Learn about many programming languages and frameworks
- Strongly influence roadmap and prioritization
Pay:
Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level 3:
- Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle — $171,200 – $235,400**
- Zone 2: Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago — $154,100 – $211,860**
- Zone 3: All other US locations — $145,500 – $200,090**
LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.
*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.
About LaunchDarkly:
Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong.
- Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages
- Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts
- Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize
- Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types
- Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability
At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at [email protected].
Do you need a disability accommodation?
Fill out this accommodations request form and someone from our People Operations team will contact you for assistance.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, LaunchDarkly recruiters will only contact you from @launchdarkly.com email addresses or via LinkedIn from "Verified Recruiter" accounts. Legitimate LaunchDarkly recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before making a job offer. If you are ever unsure about a communication, visit Careers | LaunchDarkly directly for confirmed job openings.
Please notify us of any fraudulent representation by sending an email to [email protected].
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this role truly remote, or is there an in-office requirement?
What timezone do I need to be in to work on the SDK team?
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Do I need to be an expert in all the supported SDK languages?
Will my contributions be publicly visible?
