Founding Data Engineer

CompanyHadron Security is building trust infrastructure for contested systems. We develop software that helps analysts understand complex malware, evaluate system trust, and build assurance for high-consequence environments.Elara is building the next generation of malware intelligence infrastructure. Rather than simply labeling software as malicious or benign, it extracts structured behavioral understanding from complex binaries at scale, enabling analysts to move from isolated artifacts to durable technical intelligence.About the RoleWe're looking for a Founding Data Engineer to build the data platform that powers Elara.This role sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, distributed systems, and large-scale data engineering. You'll design the infrastructure that ingests, transforms, stores, and serves billions of malware-derived artifacts while ensuring performance, reliability, provenance, and data quality.You'll work directly with the founder to shape Elara's architecture, data platform, and long-term technical direction from the ground up.Most of the platform is still being built. You'll spend your time designing greenfield systems rather than maintaining legacy infrastructure.You'll have significant ownership over technical decisions, architecture, and engineering direction. We expect our first engineers to challenge assumptions, propose new ideas, and help shape both the product and the engineering culture.What You'll BuildLarge-scale malware data ingestion and processing pipelinesHigh-performance feature extraction and transformation systemsBackend services, APIs, and distributed processing infrastructureHigh-throughput storage systems for structured malware intelligenceFeature stores supporting machine learning workflowsData quality, validation, and provenance systemsInternal tooling for researchers and model engineersPipeline orchestration, monitoring, and reliability toolingWhat We're Looking ForStrong software engineering experience with Python, Go, Rust, Java, or similar languagesExperience building scalable data-intensive systemsStrong SQL skills and database design experienceExperience designing ETL or ELT pipelinesFamiliarity with PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, DuckDB, or other analytical databasesUnderstanding of distributed systems and asynchronous processingExperience with cloud infrastructure and containerized environmentsComfortable working in ambiguity and helping define technical directionAbility to work independently in a fully remote startup environmentNice to HaveExperience working with large security or telemetry datasetsMalware analysis or cybersecurity experienceApache Arrow, Parquet, Iceberg, or Delta LakeKafka, NATS, RabbitMQ, or similar messaging systemsApache Spark, Ray, Dask, or distributed compute frameworksKubernetes and cloud-native infrastructureExperience supporting machine learning data pipelinesGraph databases such as Neo4j or MemgraphContributions to open-source data infrastructure or security projectsCompensationThis is a founding role. We are currently pre-revenue and are building our founding team before traditional salaries are available.Early team members will receive meaningful equity ownership and other founder-level incentives, with the expectation of transitioning to market-rate compensation as the company grows. We're looking for people who want to build an enduring company and own a meaningful part of what they create.Why Join Hadron?Build a cybersecurity platform from the ground upOwn core architectural decisions from day oneSolve novel large-scale malware intelligence problemsWork directly with the founder on the company's technical directionHelp build a proprietary data platform that powers next-generation security modelsReceive meaningful equity as an early member of the founding team