Senior Software Engineer, Backend

Recruiting From Scratch•San Francisco, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Our client is a rapidly growing AI infrastructure company building the backbone for next-generation agentic systems and data workflows. They are working at the frontier of AI by enabling large-scale data generation, evaluation pipelines, and human-in-the-loop systems that power advanced machine learning models. The company is already generating significant revenue with strong growth and is collaborating with leading AI labs and high-growth startups. With a highly technical and talent-dense team, they are tackling some of the most complex infrastructure challenges in AI today. Operating across domains like healthcare and finance, they are building scalable systems to support massive data throughput and real-time processing—positioning themselves as a key infrastructure layer in the evolving AI ecosystem. This is a rare opportunity to work on the foundational infrastructure powering the next generation of AI systems. You’ll tackle deeply technical challenges around scalability, distributed systems, and real-time data processing—at a company already operating at meaningful scale. If you’re an engineer who enjoys building core systems, solving hard infrastructure problems, and operating in a high-performance startup environment, this role offers significant ownership, technical depth, and upside.

Requirements

5–8 years of software engineering experience
Strong backend and infrastructure experience (distributed systems, scalability, reliability)
Experience building and operating production systems in cloud environments (AWS or GCP)
Proficiency in languages such as Python or Node.js
Experience with modern infrastructure tools (Kubernetes, Kafka, Redis, etc.)
Strong understanding of system design, data architecture, and high-throughput systems
Experience working in startup or high-growth environments
Ability to operate independently and take ownership of critical systems

Nice To Haves

Experience working on data infrastructure, ML pipelines, or human-in-the-loop systems
Background at high-growth startups, data platforms, or quantitative environments
Experience with real-time systems, event pipelines, or streaming architectures
Familiarity with Elasticsearch or large-scale search/indexing systems
Strong academic background in computer science or related field
Experience mentoring engineers or acting as a technical leader

Responsibilities

Design and build core infrastructure powering data generation, evaluation pipelines, and AI systems
Own scalability, reliability, and performance of foundational backend systems
Architect distributed systems to handle high-throughput, large-scale datasets
Collaborate with product and vertical engineering teams to enable rapid development
Establish best practices for system design, observability, and deployment
Improve infrastructure for real-time and batch processing workloads
Mentor junior engineers and contribute to a high-performance engineering culture
Work across the stack when needed (backend-heavy with some full-stack exposure)
Take ownership of critical systems from design through production

Benefits

Competitive base salary: $250,000 – $300,000
Competitive equity package
Performance-based bonus (profit share upside)
Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure
High ownership and impact as an early engineering hire
Work alongside a highly technical and talent-dense team
Fast-growing company with strong revenue traction
Opportunity to work on the foundational infrastructure powering the next generation of AI systems
Tackle deeply technical challenges around scalability, distributed systems, and real-time data processing
Significant ownership, technical depth, and upside