Anti-Bot Engineer

ppWe are looking for an engineer obsessed with breaking through anti‑bot systems. Cloudflare, Akamai, DataDome, PerimeterX. If you've spent hours analyzing fingerprinting techniques, debugging TLS handshakes, and figuring out why your headless browser gets detected, this role is for you. /p h3About SearchApi /h3 pSearchApi is a real‑time SERP API delivering structured data from over 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. /p pWe're a lean, profitable, bootstrapped team. No VC pressure, no bloat. Just engineers shipping real products to real customers. /p h3Why Join Us /h3 ul liThe hardest problems. Anti‑bot systems evolve constantly. You'll be at the cutting edge of evasion techniques. /li liReal impact. When you break through a protection, thousands of customers benefit immediately. /li liDeep technical work. This isn't surface‑level scraping. It's fingerprinting, TLS, CDP internals, browser behavior analysis. /li liFortune 500 customers. Our API powers production workloads, not just experiments. /li liBootstrapped and profitable. We answer to customers, not investors. /li /ul pWe are searching for grinders who take ownership and move fast. You'll work on the hardest technical challenges in web scraping. /p h3Tech Stack /h3 ul liPlaywright, Puppeteer, raw CDP /li liRuby, Node.js, or Python for tooling /li liBrowser internals (Chromium, Firefox) /li liNetwork analysis tools (Wireshark, Burp Suite, Proxyman) /li liAWS infrastructure /li liRuby on Rails familiarity is a plus (we use it for internal tools) /li /ul pWe use Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub, and Slack daily. We ship multiple times a day with CI/CD. /p h3You Control AI, AI Doesn't Control You /h3 pWe 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. /p h3What You'll Do /h3 ul liResearch and implement anti‑bot evasion techniques. /li liReverse engineer bot detection systems. Understand how they work, then bypass them. /li liWork with browser fingerprinting: canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, navigator properties, and more. /li liDebug TLS and protocol fingerprinting (JA3, JA4, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 over QUIC, header order and casing), and push the QUIC frontier where most detection and most scrapers haven't caught up yet. /li liOptimize Playwright/Puppeteer configurations for stealth. /li liAnalyze network traffic to understand detection mechanisms. /li liBuild internal tools for testing and validating evasion techniques. /li liStay ahead of the latest developments in bot detection. /li liDocument findings and share knowledge with the team. /li /ul pYou 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. /p h3The Hard Parts /h3 pThis role is not for everyone. Here's what makes it hard: /p ul liCat and mouse game. What works today might not work tomorrow. You need to constantly adapt. /li liDeep debugging. Sometimes you'll spend days figuring out why a single request gets blocked. /li liAmbiguity. Anti‑bot systems don't publish their detection methods. You reverse engineer and experiment. /li liPressure. When a major protection changes and customers are affected, you need to fix it fast. /li liLonely expertise. Few people understand this domain deeply. You'll often be figuring things out alone. /li /ul pIf you want clear specifications and predictable work, this isn't for you. /p h3About You /h3 ul liObsessed with evasion. You've spent your own time trying to bypass protections. You find it fun. /li liHacker mindset. You enjoy reverse engineering and figuring out how systems work. /li liDeep technical skills. Browser internals, networking, fingerprinting. Not surface‑level knowledge. /li liPersistent. You don't give up when something doesn't work. You try another approach. /li liGreat writer. You document your findings clearly so others can learn. /li liSelf‑directed. You don't need someone to assign tasks. You find the next problem to solve. /li liFluent in English, written and spoken. /li liBSc or higher in CS or equivalent technical field. /li /ul h3Required Experience /h3 ul liDeep experience with Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium internals. /li liUnderstanding of browser fingerprinting techniques and how to spoof them. /li liExperience bypassing at least one major anti‑bot system (Cloudflare, Akamai, DataDome, PerimeterX, etc.). /li liNetwork traffic analysis (Wireshark, Burp Suite, mitmproxy, or similar). /li /ul h3We're Especially Looking For /h3 ul liTLS and protocol fingerprinting experience (JA3, JA4, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 over QUIC). /li liWebRTC fingerprinting and evasion. /