Senior Backend Engineer

Waystation AI•Redwood, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Senior Backend Engineer Waystation AI | Redwood City, CA (in person, 5 days per week) | Full-time You build the data systems for the scale we are heading into, not the scale we have today. You also build product. About Waystation CPG is a $4 trillion market in the US. The manufacturers in it still buy ingredients through email and spreadsheets. Waystation reads supplier email and makes a structured record of each quote, spec, COA, and PO. Procurement, QA, and R&D teams then compare ingredients, track certifications, and write to suppliers. We are seed-stage and we have paying customers. One customer saved more than $200,000 in three months. Our founder and CEO is Ryan Caldbeck, who started CircleUp. Our investors include 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 difficult 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 points under load.
Experience designing API patterns, internal and external, that remain consistent as the product grows.
Daily use of AI tools, such as Claude Code.
Experience shipping features that use models.
Desire to build product and opinions about the user interface.
Ability to write and speak with precision.
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, planning steps, tests, and recovery procedures.
Build queues and jobs to handle increasing volumes of data and customer connections.
Ensure the pipeline is ready for future load increases before issues arise.
Provide guidance to other engineers on difficult designs and set patterns.
Build customer-facing features and systems behind them.
Talk to customers directly and use feedback to inform product development.