Senior Backend Engineer

Waystation AI•Temecula, CA

21h•Onsite

About The Position

Waystation AI is a seed-stage company with paying customers, operating in the $4 trillion US CPG market. Manufacturers in this market still rely on email and spreadsheets for purchasing ingredients. Waystation aims to revolutionize this by reading supplier emails and creating structured records of quotes, specifications, Certificates of Analysis (COAs), and Purchase Orders (POs). This enables procurement, QA, and R&D teams to compare ingredients, track certifications, and communicate with suppliers more effectively. The company was founded by Ryan Caldbeck (founder of CircleUp) and is backed by prominent investors including Founder Collective, Homebrew, Slow Ventures, 87 Capital, Floodgate, and SuccessVP.

Requirements

Six or more years of experience with production software, with depth in backend and data work.
Two or more years at a startup between seed and Series B.
Experience designing schemas for complex domains and modifying them on live systems without data loss.
Experience working with unclean data, including different units, names, and languages.
Experience building queues and background jobs, planning for retries, duplicate work, and failure modes under load.
Experience designing API patterns (internal and external) that remain consistent as a product grows.
Daily use of AI tools (e.g., Claude Code) and experience shipping features that utilize AI models.
A desire to build product and opinions about user interfaces.
Ability to write and speak with precision, clearly communicating decisions and reasoning.
Ability to work in Redwood City five days per week.

Nice To Haves

Experience with TypeScript, Node, React, GraphQL, and Postgres.

Responsibilities

Design the schema for suppliers, items, prices, and documents, covering raw materials, packaging, and freight.
Perform migrations and backfills on live customer data, including planning steps, tests, and recovery procedures.
Build and optimize queues and jobs to handle increasing data volumes as the company grows, ensuring the pipeline remains performant.
Provide guidance and set patterns for other engineers on the team, particularly in complex design areas.
Build customer-facing features and product architecture, engaging directly with customers to gather feedback and inform development.