Senior Full-Stack Engineer at Socket - Series C Growth in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Early-Stage Leverage at a Well-Funded Security Startup: Socket has raised $125M (Series C), placing it in the high-growth, pre-IPO stage where individual contributors still have outsized impact. Joining as an early full-stack engineer means direct influence over product direction, roadmap, and team culture — rare at this funding level.
Skills You'll Build: This role spans the full stack — React/TypeScript on the front end, Node.js APIs, Postgres, and 3rd-party data integrations. Bonus exposure to GraphQL, ElasticSearch, and data pipelines makes it a strong resume builder for senior and staff-level engineering tracks. Open source supply chain security is a rapidly growing niche with limited senior talent.
Compensation Signals: No specific salary range is disclosed, but "market competitive salary bands" + "meaningful equity" at a Series C company typically maps to $160K–$220K+ total compensation for senior full-stack roles in the US market. The equity upside could be significant if Socket moves toward IPO.
Green Flags:
- Founder-led (Feross Aboukhadijeh has deep open source credibility)
- Strong, well-known customer base (Anthropic, Figma, Vercel)
- Transparent interview process with a documented read-me
- 99% health coverage and paid parental leave signal employee-friendly culture
Watch For: The "move with urgency" and "ruthless prioritization" language is common at fast-moving startups — expect a demanding pace. This is best suited for engineers who thrive in ambiguity and want 0-to-1 ownership, not those seeking structured, incremental work.
About Us
Socket helps devs and security teams ship faster by cutting out security busywork. Thousands of orgs use Socket to safely find, audit, and manage open source code. Our customers — from Anthropic to xAI, and Figma to Vercel — love Socket (just check out their tweets to see for yourself!)
Founded by Feross Aboukhadijeh, a long-time open source maintainer with software downloaded over a billion times a month, Socket has raised $125M in funding from top angels, operators, and security leaders.
About the Role
Build product: This role will require you to move fast, prioritize ruthlessly, and be focused on the end user. Your voice will be essential in shaping the product and the roadmap, and your decisions will have immediate and far-reaching impact. You will work in collaboration with the engineering and design teams.
Grow the team and culture: As an early member of the team, you will form the defining DNA for the company's culture and our future team. Our ability to build a market-defining product is solely dependent on the culture we foster.
Set up foundational frameworks: You'll join at the genesis of something totally new and come into a fast-paced environment. We value process-driven systems that enable us to work smarter as we scale, and you'll build out design systems that will serve as guide rails for the engineering team.
What You'll Do
Contribute to the development of the Socket web application end-to-end
Work with the design team to develop interfaces that abstract away complexities and deliver an elegant and delightful user experience
Write APIs to deliver data from multiple data sources
Extract and transform data from 3rd party APIs
Help shape the roadmap and plan sprints that allow us to quickly deliver features and be agile to user feedback
Be a key part of hiring, including interviewing and providing input into team growth decisions
What You'll Bring
Experience working on an early-stage team in a 0-to-1 role and desire to build foundations again
Experience with designing and implementing production web applications
Experience building and integrating APIs and relational databases like Postgres
Proficiency with Node.js, JavaScript, React, and TypeScript
Adaptability to new technologies — not bound to a particular tech stack
Bonus: experience with GraphQL, ElasticSearch, headless browsers, or data pipelines
Our Interview Process
Informational with a member from our Talent Team
Hiring Manager Interview
Technical Interviews
Debrief
Final Interview with Feross
References
Decision/Offer
We know how important clarity is when looking for a new role, so we've put together a read-me about the Interview Process at Socket.
Benefits
Our benefits are crafted to support you and your family, so you can take care of what matters most and thrive in and outside of work. We offer:
Market competitive salary bands
Meaningful equity program
Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family (99% coverage)
Flexible time-off, holidays, and winter shutdown to rest & recharge
Paid parental leave
Remote-first, with quarterly team off-sites
At Socket, we
Pursue Excellence: We set ourselves apart by consistently delivering work of exceptional quality and distinction.
Move with urgency and focus: We prioritize swift, decisive action.
Think rigorously: We care about being right and it often takes reasoning from first principles to get there. We value alternative perspectives and have constructive discussions.
Trust and amplify: We overtrust, always assume good intent, and give specific feedback to help each other improve.
Feel a strong sense of ownership: We wear many hats and feel a strong sense of overall ownership of the company and we're non-territorial regarding our nominal domains.
Are customer obsessed: We relentlessly prioritize the needs of our customers, striving to exceed their expectations and delight them at every interaction.