Full-Time
Senior Backend Engineer
Performance
Updated on 9/4/2026
Teleport
201-500 employees
Zero-trust infrastructure access platform for teams
Compensation Overview
$222k - $342k/yr
Remote in USA
Remote
 Software Engineering (1) |
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- Willingness to collaborate with Teleport engineers on a coding challenge in Go as part of the interview process.
- Experience building zero-to-one products.
- Extensive experience with Go.
- Extensive experience developing scalable, reliable, and performant distributed systems and platforms.
- Experience with Linux systems engineering.
- Knowledge of identity management, role-based access control, attribute-based access control, and zero-trust security models.
- Become an expert on the scalability, performance, and reliability of Teleport in large deployments.
- Design, develop, and ship high-quality products.
- Write most of the code in Go.
- Collaborate with other Teleport teams on scalability and performance matters.
- Work directly with customers to diagnose and remediate performance issues.
- Work across the full product lifecycle, including understanding customer problems, writing design documents, implementing, testing, and documenting solutions.
- Significant contributions to open source.
Teleport provides secure access to infrastructure for developers and security teams using a zero-trust approach. It ensures every user and device is authenticated and authorized before accessing any resource, reducing risks from phishing, malware, and insider threats. The platform can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and integrates with a range of popular tools, offering a subscription-based service with a free trial. Teleport differentiates itself by combining zero-trust security with ease of management and flexible deployment options that fit both large enterprises and smaller teams. Its goal is to help organizations protect infrastructure access, streamline identity and access management, and improve cloud and network security for developers and security teams.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
Series C
Total Funding
$169.3M
Headquarters
Oakland, California
Founded
2015
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See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Cisco's August 2026 partnership validates Teleport and expands distribution across enterprise networking customers.
- Teleport launched Linux Desktop support on August 18, 2026, widening its protected-resource footprint.
- Beams beta gained LLM Proxy and Delegated Identity in June 2026, targeting agentic workflows.
What critics are saying
- Cisco became Teleport's largest strategic investor on August 25, 2026, squeezing standalone pricing power.
- Microsoft, Okta, and Palo Alto Networks are attacking identity and agent security this year.
- If Cisco bundles Teleport deeply, enterprise buyers adopt Cisco-native controls and Teleport loses independence.
What makes Teleport unique
- Teleport owns the Infrastructure Identity category, replacing static credentials with cryptographic, short-lived access.
- Teleport unifies servers, databases, Kubernetes, cloud consoles, Linux desktops, and AI agents.
- Teleport records every session, giving security teams attribution, auditability, and instant remediation.
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401k
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Internet & cell phone allowance
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Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 0%1 year growth
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↑ 0%Why Cisco and Teleport teamed-up on Infrastructure Identity. August 27, 2026 Ev Kontsevoy, Co-Founder and CEO of Teleport, says Cisco's new partnership is needed as the identity-agnostic model "isn't enough" for AI infrastructure When people say early principles of networking were made for a different era, they are talking about one crucial issue that was not part of the initial design - identity. Cisco explains the identity-agnostic system as such - "Packets moved because they had addresses. Routers and switches forwarded traffic because the network knew where something was going, not necessarily who or what was behind it." The age of intelligent systems is here and identity can no longer be an afterthought. Which is why Cisco and Teleport are deepening their relationship through a strategic partnership focused on technology integration, licensing and investment. This will see Cisco becoming the largest strategic investor in Teleport, as the network security giant embarks on its fourth identity deal in four months. The partnership comes as organisations face a rapidly changing infrastructure landscape, where employees are no longer the only actors accessing critical systems. Cloud workloads, automation and AI agents are increasingly able to act autonomously, creating new challenges around identity, access and accountability. Key to this partnership is a move towards what the companies call 'Infrastructure Identity' - "a robust, cryptographic foundation" to anchor secure identity to each and every human and machine action within the enterprise. The announcement comes via a blog authored jointly by Ev Kontsevoy, Co-Founder and CEO of Teleport, and Peter Bailey, SVP/GM of Security at Cisco's Security Business Group. Teleport CEO: the need to build 'Infrastructure Identity' "Enterprise networking operated on a simple foundation for decades: traffic moved because packets had destination addresses, regardless of who or what was behind them," as Ev elaborates. "Cloud automation and autonomous AI agents have brought more actors into the infrastructure than the network was ever designed to see. This is why Cisco and Teleport are entering a strategic partnership. "Together, we're moving organisations from fragmented, credential-reliant workflows to a unified model of Infrastructure Identity." This goes a step further from the old model of workforce identity and privilege becoming earned - it exists for as long as the task requires and access is revoked after, removing the need for reusable credentials that could remain valid beyond the original task, creating risk. "There should be no anonymous computing in critical infrastructure," Ev says. "Infrastructure Identity anchors cryptographic identity to every human and machine action, delivering identity context without forcing operators to trade speed for control." Cisco and Teleport say their technology integration will broker and record infrastructure connections using short-lived cryptographic access. The initial focus will be privileged access for network and infrastructure administrators, giving security teams greater visibility into who accessed a resource, why access was granted and what happened during the resulting session. The identity challenge in the physical world. Such an approach is pertinent to an environment where AI has expanded the number of actors operating within enterprise infrastructure. Autonomous agents that can perform tasks without direct human intervention, potentially requiring access to systems, data and infrastructure, have become a moving part of the modern enterprise. There should be no anonymous computing in critical infrastructure Ev Kontsevoy, Co-Founder and CEO of Teleport This is also a time when attackers are "living off the AI land" (LOTAIL) - as CrowdStrike's Field CTO for Europe, Zeki Turedi puts it - where the very environment of AI becomes ground zero for exploitation. The scope of the identity challenge extends beyond software in a world where AI is embedded in robotics and industrial systems. Compromised identity controls in such systems can have disastrous consequences in the physical world. Cisco and Teleport therefore position Infrastructure Identity as more than an access-control mechanism. The companies see it as part of the wider foundation for operational resilience in an AI-driven enterprise. What is identity-aware infrastructure? Cisco brandishes its long experience across enterprise networking and infrastructure, which can be leveraged with Teleport's identity-native access designed around short-lived permissions and recorded sessions. The companies say the goal is to make secure access the easiest route for legitimate users rather than a process that employees attempt to bypass when they need to work quickly. Over time, the partnership aims to extend identity context beyond traditional network information such as IP addresses, allowing organisations to apply identity-based policies deeper within their infrastructure. As AI agents and other autonomous systems become increasingly important to enterprise operations, Cisco and Teleport argue that every actor should have an identifiable, attributable and appropriately scoped identity. Once everything has an identity it unlocks what Cisco calls an identity-aware network that "brings actor context beyond IP address, for better visibility and identity-based policy enforcement at the deepest layer." * Cisco and Teleport announced a strategic partnership on 25 August 2026 spanning technology integration, licensing, and investment, with Cisco becoming Teleport's largest strategic investor * The partnership centres on "Infrastructure Identity", a cryptographic model that replaces standing credentials with short-lived, task-scoped access for every human and machine actor. * The first use case targets privileged access for network and infrastructure administrators, giving security teams visibility into who accessed a resource, why, and what happened during the session * This is Cisco's fourth identity-focused move in four months, following its acquisition of Astrix Security and updates to Duo IAM and its Splunk-based Agentic SOC platform * CrowdStrike's Zeki Turedi describes a related emerging threat pattern, "living off the AI land" (LOTAIL), where AI agents' broad permissions and weak governance make them a prime target for exploitation Cisco's key partners. * OpenAI: OpenAI's Codex is natively embedded within Cisco Cloud Control Studio, letting network and security operators build custom AI agents and applications using natural-language prompts rather than code. The integration was highlighted directly by OpenAI's leadership at Cisco Live 2026. It reflects Cisco's wider push to bring agentic AI capabilities directly into its infrastructure and security tooling for enterprise customers. * NVIDIA: Cisco and NVIDIA jointly power the Cisco Secure AI Factory, combining Cisco Silicon One networking with NVIDIA Spectrum-X and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software. The partnership embeds security at every layer of AI infrastructure, from model development through runtime, with Cisco AI Defense safeguarding against prompt injection and data privacy risks. * SpecterOps: SpecterOps partners with Cisco Duo to strengthen Active Directory defence, using BloodHound Enterprise to help security teams identify and reduce real-world identity attack paths. The partnership closes a longstanding gap in legacy on-premises identity infrastructure, where modern controls and multi-factor authentication have historically been difficult to apply. It reflects Cisco's broader push to secure identity across both modern and legacy environments. * World Wide Technology (WWT): WWT is one of Cisco's largest channel partners, working closely with Cisco on its evolving Cisco 360 Partner Program. WWT senior vice president Brian Ortbals has described Cisco's approach as genuinely collaborative, with the vendor incorporating direct partner feedback into the programme's design. The partnership spans AI infrastructure, security, and managed services delivery for enterprise customers. Company Portals
Cisco bets on Teleport to put identity on every server, workload, and AI agent. By IT News AI / Tue, Aug 25 2026 / Cisco is investing in Teleport and embedding its infrastructure-access technology across its portfolio to give servers, laptops, workloads, network devices, and AI agents their own cryptographic identities. The partnership aims to replace standing credentials and shared secrets with short-lived access that can be tied to a specific actor, action, and session. Identity becomes the control layer. Teleport's platform enrolls infrastructure components and assigns each one an identity, covering systems such as servers, databases, microservices, Kubernetes environments, and network switches. Cisco and Teleport plan to broker and record connections using identity-aware access, allowing policies to distinguish between a human, machine workload, or autonomous agent requesting access. The companies described the arrangement as a combination of investment, licensing, and deep technology integration. They did not disclose the value of Cisco's investment. The approach is intended to address the growth of non-human access as cloud automation and AI agents increasingly act on production infrastructure without direct human intervention. Cisco expands its identity portfolio. Cisco's Teleport partnership follows a broader push into machine and agent identity. The company acquired Astrix Security in June to strengthen visibility and control for AI agents and other non-human identities, then acquired WideField Security in July for identity lifecycle security and telemetry that Cisco is integrating with Splunk's Agentic SOC platform. Cisco also introduced Duo Identity and Access Management in 2025. Together, these efforts move Cisco beyond traditional user authentication toward tracking who or what is acting, what it can reach, and whether its access should continue.
Identity everywhere: bringing Infrastructure Identity to agentic IT. Every era of computing eventually exposes the assumptions that made the last era work. For decades, networking succeeded because it was mostly identity agnostic. Packets moved because they had addresses. Routers and switches forwarded traffic because the network knew where something was going, not necessarily who or what was behind it. That model helped build the internet and modern enterprises. But it is not enough for the era Cisco Systems, Inc is entering now. Today, far more than employees touch infrastructure. Workloads and automation act continuously, while AI agents can now make decisions at machine speed. The identity problem is no longer confined to a person logging into an application. It extends to every actor that can reach something valuable. To tackle the evolving complexities of modern identity management, Cisco and Teleport are announcing a strategic partnership centered on deep technology integration, licensing, and investment. As the largest strategic investor, Cisco is reinforcing its commitment to accelerating the next phase of Teleport's evolution. Together, Cisco Systems, Inc is empowering organizations to transition from fragmented, credential-reliant workflows to a unified model of 'Infrastructure Identity,' a robust, cryptographic foundation that anchors secure identity to every human and machine action across the enterprise. Identity has become the control plane. Security leaders have made real progress on workforce identity. Infrastructure, however, has outpaced the systems built to protect it. Its identities are scattered across each environment and operational tool, leaving security teams with fragments of the story. They may see that a connection occurred, but not enough context to judge the action or trust the actor behind it. Traditional privileged access management addressed part of this problem by vaulting and rotating passwords. Yet when the approved route slows urgent work, operators find another way in. The workaround restores speed, but it also restores standing access and leaves durable secrets outside the intended controls. Meanwhile, the vault itself becomes a high-value target. The problem is not missing features. It is a model that loses protection precisely when people route around it. What Cisco Systems, Inc mean by Infrastructure Identity. Infrastructure Identity starts with a simple principle: there should be no anonymous computing in critical infrastructure. Infrastructure Identity turns that principle into an operating model. Trust is established for the actor and carried into each connection, while privilege is issued only for the task and expires with its access window. Static credentials and standing access give way to cryptographic identity and short-lived permissions, creating accountability without asking operators to trade speed for control. The distinction matters. A vault asks who may use a powerful secret. Infrastructure Identity starts with the actor and evaluates whether a specific action should be allowed now. Cisco will partner with Teleport to broker and record the connection using short-lived cryptographic access, removing long standing secrets and broad access. This is not a better vault. It is a move from credential custody to identity-native access. Why this matters now. The enterprise identity surface was already growing before AI. Cloud and automation created more machine actors with access to critical systems. AI now accelerates both sides of the problem: it introduces autonomous agents that can act across infrastructure, while giving attackers the speed to discover and exploit identity gaps that teams once had time to find themselves. Ambiguous identity, broad access, and standing privilege are no longer background risk. They are active paths to critical systems. The stakes rise again as AI moves beyond software. In robots and industrial systems, a compromised or overprivileged actor can affect the physical world before a human has time to intervene. Infrastructure Identity is therefore not just an access-control issue. It is a foundation for operational resilience. Why Cisco and Teleport. Cisco has always operated where the enterprise connects. That position matters because the network sees connections, while identity reveals the actors behind them. Teleport completes the picture by replacing secret-based access with short-lived, identity-native access that leaves a clear session record. Together, Cisco Systems, Inc can bring identity context closer to where action happens. Its first use case is privileged access for network and infrastructure administrators. Picture an engineer entering a maintenance window. Instead of retrieving a standing credential from a vault - or using a path outside it - the engineer verifies identity and requests only the access needed for that task. Teleport brokers and records the session, then ends the privilege with the access window. The engineer never receives a reusable credential that can outlive the task. Cisco brings the infrastructure and network context to make that path more useful and, over time, easier to enforce. The secure route cannot be a detour. It must be the simplest way to get legitimate work done. What customers should expect. Network and infrastructure teams should see the impact first. Operators get a faster path to the resources they are authorized to use, without collecting secrets or detouring through access methods built for another era. Instead of granting standing privilege because the approved process is too slow, teams can issue short-lived access for the work at hand. Security teams gain the context to trace an access decision through the resulting session and understand what changed. That shortens incident reconstruction and helps teams contain the blast radius. AI teams can bring agents into the same governance model from the start. Agents should not inherit broad, unmanaged access simply because they need to move quickly. They should receive only the privilege required for the task, with every action attributable. The next chapter of trusted infrastructure. The next decade of infrastructure will be defined by more than people logging into systems. Human access will be only one part of the story. Autonomous software will act on its behalf, and physical AI will carry some of those decisions into the real world. Trust cannot depend on credentials that can be shared or persist in a vault. It must be established continuously and carried out with the action. That is the promise of Infrastructure Identity: no anonymous computing, no unmanaged privilege, and no forced tradeoff between stronger security and operational speed. Identity must become part of the infrastructure itself, following every actor wherever it connects and acts. And once everything has an identity, that unlocks the opportunity to have an identity-aware network that brings actor context beyond IP address, for better visibility and identity-based policy enforcement at the deepest layer. Infrastructure is becoming the system of action for the AI era. Identity must become the foundation of trust. SVP/GM, security. Security business group (SBG).
Teleport brings Infrastructure Identity to Linux desktops. Developer-preferred desktop operating system now supported in the same unified identity layer as servers, clusters, and databases Oakland, California - August 18, 2026 - Teleport, the AI Infrastructure Identity Company, today announced support for Linux Desktop as a protected resource within the Teleport Infrastructure Identity Platform. Engineering teams can now apply the same cryptographic identity, least-privilege access controls, and session auditability to Linux desktops that they rely on for servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, GitHub, and cloud environments. The result: Their developer workstation will reside within the same unified identity layer as the rest of their infrastructure. The announcement reflects the accelerating shift in how engineering teams work. According to the Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey of more than 49,000 respondents, Ubuntu alone accounts for 27.7% of professional development environments, with many other Linux distros including Debian, Red Hat, and Arch showing the distinct migration to Linux desktops. Because the infrastructure that engineers build and operate largely runs on Linux, working on a Linux desktop creates parity between development and production environments. This trend is further fueled by the end-of-life of support in 2025 of widely distributed Windows 10 platforms and the broad migration of core business software and developer tooling to SaaS. "With this release, we're extending the infrastructure identity layer to Linux, making Linux on the desktop the first class citizen in your computing infrastructure. This eliminates yet another identity silo, yet another attack surface, and yet another vendor to manage," said Ev Kontsevoy, CEO of Teleport. "When the developer's Linux box is governed by the same unified identity layer as the rest of your infrastructure, you remove risk and harden resiliency. This is becoming more critical as frontier AI models emerge that can rapidly identify vulnerabilities for exploitation." With Linux Desktop support, Teleport customers can access Linux hosts across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments without opening ports or managing SSH keys, with all sessions subject to the same just-in-time access request workflows, live session monitoring, and audit logs applied to other supported protected resources in the platform. This also enables companies to apply device trust, which ensures that resources are only accessed from registered and cryptographically verified machines, to this asset class. Linux Desktop, available in August, joins servers, Kubernetes, databases, web applications, Windows desktops, cloud consoles (AWS, GCP, Azure), GitHub, and MCP servers as a Teleport-protected resource type, extending the unified identity layer to one of the fastest-growing and most operationally critical surfaces in modern engineering organizations. About Teleport Teleport, the AI Infrastructure Identity Company, prepares organizations for an AI future by establishing a unified identity layer for infrastructure, with humans, machines, workloads, and AI agents secured cryptographically with a hardware root of trust rather than vulnerable credentials. By replacing fragmented identity and access management systems with Infrastructure Identity, Teleport scales zero trust across cloud and on-prem environments, eliminating the complexity and risk created by identity fragmentation and credential sprawl. Teleport protects infrastructure from identity attacks, accelerates engineering by reducing infrastructure complexity, and secures non-deterministic agentic workflows. Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Teleport operates globally, with industry-leading customers such as Nasdaq, IBM, Carta, and Elastic. For more information, visit goteleport.com or follow @goteleport.
Teleport named in the 2026 Inc. 5000 annual list of america's fastest-growing companies. Second consecutive year on the list reflects rising demand for infrastructure identity as organizations bring AI agents into production Oakland, California - Aug. 11, 2026 - Teleport, the AI Infrastructure Identity Company, today announced it has been named to the 2026 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., marking the company's second consecutive year on the list. Teleport ranked No. 1,508 overall, up from No. 2,551 in 2025. The company also came in at No. 31 in the security category. The list offers a data-driven view of the most successful companies among independent, entrepreneurial businesses in the U.S. Past honorees include companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Chobani, Under Armour, Timberland, Oracle, and Patagonia. Teleport's consecutive placement reflects accelerating enterprise demand for infrastructure identity, a recognition of a foundational architectural shift in how identities are secured and managed in production infrastructure. As AI agents join humans, machines, and workloads as a new actor in production infrastructure, the number of identities is growing exponentially. Teleport establishes a unified identity layer, where every actor - human, machine, workload, or AI agent - receives a cryptographic identity anchored to a hardware root of trust, with short-lived privileges that expire on task completion. "You cannot meet the AI opportunity without scale," said Ev Kontsevoy, CEO of Teleport. "Every agent deployed to your infrastructure behaves unpredictably, it needs an identity, and must be contained. This is what Teleport was built to solve." "Every company on the Inc. 5000 has a story of perseverance, smart decision making, and a refusal to sit still," says Mike Hofman, editor-in-chief of Inc. "Their growth reflects more than strong financial performance-it reflects creativity, resilience, and the customer focus required to build companies that make a lasting impact. We congratulate all honorees on this significant achievement." About Teleport Teleport, the AI Infrastructure Identity Company, prepares organizations for an AI future by delivering a unified identity layer for infrastructure - humans, machines, workloads, and AI agents - that is cryptographically secured. By replacing fragmented identity and access management systems and static credentials with Infrastructure Identity, Teleport scales zero trust across cloud and on-prem environments. This approach prevents identity attacks, accelerates engineering, and secures non-deterministic agentic workflows. For more information, visit goteleport.com or follow @goteleport. About Inc. Inc. is the leading media brand and playbook for the entrepreneurs and business leaders shaping its future. Through its journalism, Inc. aims to inform, educate, and elevate the profile of its community: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters who are creating the future of business. Inc. is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with fellow leading business publication Fast Company. For more information, visit inc.com. Methodology Companies on the 2026 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2022 to 2025. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2022. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independent - not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies - as of December 31, 2025. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2022 is $100,000; the minimum for 2025 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Teleport Media Inquiries