Senior/Staff Backend Engineer
About The Position
We're looking for a senior or staff-level backend engineer to own and evolve the core systems that power Lighthouse. Our backend is Python and TypeScript, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, and serverless compute, with LLMs woven throughout. This role is focused on making our backend faster, more reliable, and ready to scale. The problems ahead of us include designing and building agentic systems (autonomous, multi-step workflows that draft legal documents, review cases, and orchestrate complex processes with minimal human input), improving backend security (tightening auth, moving toward proper environment isolation, hardening our database access patterns), scaling our API layer (the customer-facing GraphQL API has grown organically and needs better structure, performance, and maintainability), building robust data pipelines and integrations across Slack, Linear, HubSpot, Front, and other external services, and strengthening our document ingestion and generation pipelines (the systems that turn messy inputs into filing-ready legal output).
Requirements
- 5+ years building and operating production backend systems: APIs, databases, async job processing, event-driven architectures.
- Strong in Python/Typescript and have experience building scalable, complex backend systems.
- Experience with PostgreSQL, async Python, and event-driven architectures is a plus.
- Have built (or want to build) agentic systems and LLM-powered features.
- Think carefully about system design: service boundaries, data modeling, failure modes, observability.
- Have high agency, especially for independent research and problem-solving.
- Have dealt with the messy realities of scaling systems: migrations, dual-writes, feature flags, legacy code removal.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with PostgreSQL, async Python, and event-driven architectures.
Responsibilities
- Designing and building agentic systems: autonomous, multi-step workflows that draft legal documents, review cases, and orchestrate complex processes with minimal human input.
- Improving backend security: tightening auth, moving toward proper environment isolation, hardening our database access patterns.
- Scaling our API layer. The customer-facing GraphQL API has grown organically and needs better structure, performance, and maintainability.
- Building robust data pipelines and integrations across Slack, Linear, HubSpot, Front, and other external services.
- Strengthening our document ingestion and generation pipelines, the systems that turn messy inputs into filing-ready legal output.
Benefits
- Competitive base and equity, scales with experience.
- Competitive medical, dental, and vision benefits.
- 401k with a 3% company match.
- Equipment/office stipend.
- Annual team off-site in cool places.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
