Lead Open Source Engineer

About Paragon

Paragon is building the infrastructure layer that powers integrations for modern SaaS companies. We help teams ship and operate integrations faster by providing a scalable platform for authentication, data sync, actions, and operational reliability - so product teams can focus on their core product instead of integration complexity.

Our customers range from fast-growing startups to large enterprises, and our platform is used to run mission-critical integrations in production.

What you’ll do

• Partner with internal teams building core platform infrastructure and guide its evolution with open-source readiness in mind.

• Define and implement internal standards for code quality, documentation, testing, and release discipline.

• Own long-term technical direction for platform components that may become open source, including extensibility, API/SDK design, backwards compatibility, and migrations.

• Design contribution, review, and governance models before they’re public, so Paragon can move deliberately when the timing is right.

• Help define and maintain clear boundaries between open-source and enterprise-only functionality.

• Act as an internal expert and advisor on open-source strategy, tradeoffs, and best practices.

• Represent Paragon externally when appropriate through writing, talks, and technical discussions.

What we’re looking for

• Senior software engineer with experience building platforms, frameworks, or developer tooling.

• Experience leading, maintaining, or stewarding a substantial open-source project or owning a widely used internal platform with similar rigor.

• Strong technical judgment around API and SDK design, versioning, compatibility, and long-term maintainability.

• Experience working at a company that balanced open-source initiatives with a commercial product.

• Strong experience building production systems in Node.js / TypeScript, including designing and maintaining public APIs or SDKs. Deep familiarity with TypeScript’s type system and its role in developer experience is a strong plus.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Comfort operating in ambiguous, zero-to-one environments and defining strategy as you go.

Nice to have

• Prior experience managing or maintaining a large, widely adopted open-source framework.

• Experience speaking at technical conferences or industry events.

• Background in developer platforms, integrations, or infrastructure products.

• Familiarity with open-core business models.

• Public technical writing, blogs, or talks.

Why this role at Paragon

• You’ll shape Paragon’s open-source strategy from the ground up.

• You’ll work on real, production-grade infrastructure used by customers today.

• You’ll have significant influence over technical direction and long-term platform decisions.

• You’ll help determine if, when, and how Paragon shares its technology with the broader developer community.

Compensation Range: $200K - $260K