Senior/Staff Backend Engineer

Recruiting From Scratch•San Francisco, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our client is a fast-growing AI-enabled platform modernizing one of the most operationally complex and high-stakes workflows in global talent mobility: immigration and visa processing for high-skilled workers. The company builds infrastructure that powers end-to-end immigration workflows for ambitious companies hiring global talent. Their platform is deeply embedded into customer operations and replaces fragmented legal, operational, and data-heavy workflows with a unified, AI-assisted system. With strong early traction (~$10M ARR on ~$2M raised), the company is scaling rapidly and expanding its engineering team to support increasing product complexity, enterprise integrations, and AI-driven automation across legal workflows. Backed by strong founder-market fit and deep domain expertise, the company operates at the intersection of legal infrastructure, AI agents, and enterprise workflow automation. This is a high-ownership engineering environment where systems correctness, reliability, and speed directly impact real-world legal outcomes.

Requirements

5+ years of backend engineering experience (Senior to Staff level readiness)
Strong production experience with Python in scalable systems
Proven experience owning backend systems end-to-end in startups or fast-growth environments
Strong system design fundamentals (APIs, distributed systems, data modeling)
Experience working in Series A–C startups or high-ownership engineering teams
Comfortable operating without heavy PM structure or detailed specs
Strong product sense and ability to work directly with users/customers
Experience in high-complexity, workflow-heavy domains (bonus: legal, fintech, infra, or ops platforms)

Nice To Haves

Experience building or scaling GraphQL APIs in production
Exposure to LLM applications, agentic workflows, or AI automation systems
Experience with event-driven architectures or workflow orchestration systems
Familiarity with PostgreSQL, serverless infrastructure, and cloud platforms (AWS preferred)
Experience integrating third-party APIs in production systems
Background in infrastructure-heavy startups or automation platforms
Experience at companies like Stripe, Brex, Ramp, Palantir, Linear, or similar
Experience in workflow automation / agent platforms (e.g., Inngest, n8n, Trigger.dev, Windmill ecosystem)
Strong GitHub or evidence of shipped systems
Built and owned backend systems used in production at scale
Experience designing data models for complex workflows or multi-entity systems
History of making architectural decisions under ambiguity
Proven ability to operate in fast-moving, high-ownership environments
Hands-on experience shipping AI-enabled or automation-heavy products
Strong communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Ability to move fast without sacrificing correctness or security

Responsibilities

Own the design and evolution of core backend systems powering immigration workflow automation
Build and scale Python-based backend services, APIs, and platform infrastructure
Architect and implement agentic workflows that automate multi-step legal processes
Redesign and scale GraphQL APIs used by customers and internal teams
Improve backend system reliability, security, and data integrity
Design robust data models for complex legal and operational workflows
Build integrations with external systems (Slack, Linear, HubSpot, Front, etc.)
Contribute to migration efforts (including infrastructure modernization to AWS)
Develop LLM-powered features for document generation and workflow automation
Improve system performance, scalability, and maintainability under rapid growth
Work directly with non-technical stakeholders (legal ops, customers, founders)
Own technical decisions end-to-end in a high-agency, low-process environment
Help define engineering culture and platform architecture as an early senior hire