Team Lead — Dataplane Engineering (Python / Go)

About GBSFO

GBSFO has been building software for its partners since 2011. We cover the full development cycle: design, implementation, quality assurance and release. We started out working with market leaders in telecommunications, and networking expertise is still at the core of what we do. More than 80 specialists work across web and mobile development, UI/UX, QA automation, DevOps, NetOps and IT infrastructure.

About the Project

Our client is a network security product company. Its segmentation engine discovers devices across enterprise networks and enforces access policies. The engine is distributed edge software that runs as an on-prem virtual appliance.

We're forming a new team inside the client's dataplane organization. The core dataplane team hardens existing network segmentation. This team extends what the engine can discover and enforce: new environments, new enforcement points and new integrations.

You are the first hire on this team, and you will set its culture. The role is player-coach: you own delivery, run intake with product management, hire and grow engineers, and write production code alongside your team.

Responsibilities

Lead and grow a small engineering team: hiring, mentoring and holding a high quality bar.

Own feature delivery end-to-end, from product request to production deployment.

Run intake with product managers and turn incoming requests into a groomed, prioritized backlog with explicit tiers.

Stay hands-on: design and write production Python and Go code.

Agree boundaries and API contracts with the core dataplane and cloud backend teams.

Take features from lab to general availability, including conformance testing and safe rollouts.

What We're Looking For

You have led a software team as a tech lead or engineering manager who still codes, and you have shipped production software.

You have hired, onboarded and mentored engineers, and you can talk about your hiring successes and failures.

Strong hands-on Python and/or Go: you write production code today and review your team's.

Production ownership: you operate and debug what your team ships.

You work directly with product management on scope and can decline requests with clear reasoning.

High quality standards.

English at B2 level or higher: you'll communicate directly with the client's engineering and product leadership.

Required: at least one of the following

We only consider applications that show at least one of these. Please say clearly in your CV or cover note which one applies to you.

Networking fundamentals: L3/L4, flows, connection tracking, firewall behavior.

Experience at a security or networking vendor.

Hands-on work across infrastructure platforms beyond networking.

Working knowledge of Java alongside Python or Go.

You have built an engineering team from its first hire.

Your First 90 Days

Team charter, intake path and priority tiers agreed with the engineering director.

A groomed, prioritized backlog, with the first feature running in the lab.

A working map of the engine's internals and its subsystem boundaries.

A hiring and onboarding plan for the team's incoming engineers.

Why Join

A small senior team with high trust and little ceremony. The engineering culture values ownership, rigor and patience over quick fixes.

A product with real technical depth in network security.

GBSFO's networking domain classes, open to everyone at the company.

Before you apply

This is a senior lead role with a narrow profile. Applications that don't meet the core requirements and at least one item from the required list won't be reviewed.