Anti-Bot Engineer

• Ruby, Node.js, or Python for tooling
• Browser internals (Chromium, Firefox)
• Network analysis tools (Wireshark, Burp Suite, Proxyman)
• AWS infrastructure
• Ruby on Rails familiarity is a plus (we use it for internal tools)

We use Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub, and Slack daily. We ship multiple times a day with CI/CD.

You Control AI, AI Doesn't Control You

We ship faster because we use AI tools aggressively. Cursor and Claude. But you own the output. If you can't evaluate what AI produces, you're not ready for this role.

What You'll Do

• Research and implement anti-bot evasion techniques.
• Reverse engineer bot detection systems. Understand how they work, then bypass them.
• Work with browser fingerprinting: canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, navigator properties, and more.
• Debug TLS fingerprinting (JA3, JA4, HTTP/2 fingerprints).
• Optimize Playwright/Puppeteer configurations for stealth.
• Analyze network traffic to understand detection mechanisms.
• Build internal tools for testing and validating evasion techniques.
• Stay ahead of the latest developments in bot detection.
• Document findings and share knowledge with the team.

You define the work. We don't have a task list for this role. You tell us what you'll work on based on what's broken, what's getting detected, and where you see opportunities. This is how much control you'll have.

The Hard Parts

This role is not for everyone. Here's what makes it hard:

• Cat and mouse game. What works today might not work tomorrow. You need to constantly adapt.
• Deep debugging. Sometimes you'll spend days figuring out why a single request gets blocked.
• Ambiguity. Anti-bot systems don't publish their detection methods. You reverse engineer and experiment.
• Pressure. When a major protection changes and customers are affected, you need to fix it fast.
• Lonely expertise. Few people understand this domain deeply. You'll often be figuring things out alone.

If you want clear specifications and predictable work, this isn't for you.

• Obsessed with evasion. You've spent your own time trying to bypass protections. You find it fun.
• Hacker mindset. You enjoy reverse engineering and figuring out how systems work.
• Deep technical skills. Browser internals, networking, fingerprinting. Not surface-level knowledge.
• Persistent. You don't give up when something doesn't work. You try another approach.
• Great writer. You document your findings clearly so others can learn.
• Self-directed. You don't need someone to assign tasks. You find the next problem to solve.
• Fluent in English, written and spoken.
• BSc or higher in CS or equivalent technical field., * Deep experience with Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium internals.
• Understanding of browser fingerprinting techniques and how to spoof them.
• Experience bypassing at least one major anti-bot system (Cloudflare, Akamai, DataDome, PerimeterX, etc.).
• Network traffic analysis (Wireshark, Burp Suite, mitmproxy, or similar)., * TLS fingerprinting experience (JA3, JA4, HTTP/2).
• WebRTC fingerprinting and evasion.
• Chromium or Firefox source code familiarity.
• Experience at scale handling millions of requests.
• Contributions to open-source evasion tools.

About SearchApi SearchApi is a real-time SERP API delivering structured data from 100+ search engines and sources, including Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Jobs, Bing, Baidu, YouTube, Amazon, and many more. We power production workloads for Fortune 500 companies and fast-moving startups who need reliable search data at scale. We're a lean, profitable, bootstrapped team. No VC pressure, no bloat. Just engineers shipping real products to real customers. Why Join Us? * The hardest problems. Anti-bot systems evolve constantly. You'll be at the cutting edge of evasion techniques. * Real impact. When you break through a protection, thousands of customers benefit immediately. * Deep technical work. This isn't surface-level scraping. It's fingerprinting, TLS, CDP internals, browser behavior analysis. * Fortune 500 Customers. Our API powers production workloads, not just experiments. * Bootstrapped and Profitable. We answer to customers, not investors. We are searching for grinders who take ownership and move fast. You'll work on the hardest technical challenges in web scraping.