Sr Platform Engineer - Backend

Baker Tilly•San Jose, CA

About The Position

Baker Tilly is seeking a Sr Platform Engineer — Backend to join the founding team of the firm's AI Product Group (APG). The role supports the development and operation of shared platform services that power AI applications and intelligent agents across the organization. This hands-on engineering position designs, builds, and maintains scalable, secure, and reliable backend services, APIs, runtime components, and integrations for internal and third-party AI solutions. The engineer will help establish foundational platform capabilities, including identity and access management, enterprise data connectivity, telemetry, and production infrastructure. The role collaborates with platform leadership, enterprise architects, AI engineers, data platform teams, and globally distributed technical teams to deliver production-ready services aligned with enterprise technology standards. It emphasizes backend engineering, security, evaluation-driven development, and end-to-end ownership of production systems. Prior AI, large language model, or agentic systems experience is not required.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
At least 3 years of hands-on backend or platform software engineering experience, including designing, developing, and operating production services used by other engineering teams.
Experience independently building, deploying, and operating shared production backend services that other engineers or applications depend on, including ownership of associated build and deployment pipelines.
Hands-on experience implementing authentication, authorization, or entitlement capabilities in production applications or services.
Deep proficiency in at least one mainstream programming language, such as Python, TypeScript, Go, or Java, with knowledge of language fundamentals, design patterns, and production-quality development practices.
Ability to learn and apply new programming languages, frameworks, and technologies.
Strong experience with backend service development, RESTful APIs, service integration, secure application design, and distributed systems fundamentals.
Experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL or comparable technologies, including data modeling, querying, and integration with backend services.
Hands-on experience with containers, cloud infrastructure, automated build processes, and CI/CD pipelines supporting production applications.
Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, automated testing, debugging, code reviews, performance optimization, and development of reliable, maintainable services.
Ability to evaluate technical solutions through measurable outcomes, including automated tests, benchmarks, experiments, performance metrics, or comparative evaluations.
Strong analytical thinking, technical judgment, and problem-solving skills, including the ability to assess architectural trade-offs, prioritize practical solutions, and avoid unnecessary complexity.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including documenting technical solutions, explaining engineering decisions, and working with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
Ability to work independently, manage competing priorities, and deliver high-quality solutions in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
Ability to collaborate with globally distributed engineering teams, external technology partners, and cross-functional stakeholders.
Experience using AI-assisted and agentic development tools to improve engineering productivity, or a strong willingness to incorporate them into daily development practices.
No professional certifications or licenses are required.

Nice To Haves

An advanced degree is preferred.
Familiarity with Python and TypeScript is preferred.
Experience with event-driven architectures, messaging systems, streaming technologies, or asynchronous processing.
Familiarity with observability, monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing technologies, such as OpenTelemetry or comparable frameworks.
Experience with cloud platforms, preferably Microsoft Azure, and related infrastructure, deployment, and security services.
Additional experience with enterprise identity and access management, entitlement systems, or secure service-to-service communication.
Familiarity with telemetry pipelines, operational data integration, or evaluation-based release processes.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain scalable backend services, APIs, and runtime components for AI agents, enterprise applications, and shared platform capabilities.
Build secure authentication, authorization, and entitlement capabilities for users, AI agents, delegated agent activities, and autonomous processes.
Develop APIs, service interfaces, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoints that allow AI agents to securely discover, retrieve, and interact with governed enterprise data.
Design reusable services and stable interfaces that allow the firm to integrate, evaluate, and replace AI models, tools, and third-party technologies without disrupting core platform operations.
Implement event-based interfaces, logging, tracing, and telemetry pipelines to capture AI agent activity, decisions, and operational data for monitoring, evaluation, and improvement.
Partner with AI Engineering to incorporate automated evaluations, testing frameworks, and performance baselines into development and deployment processes.
Prototype, test, and evaluate emerging platform capabilities, using measurable results to decide which should become scalable shared services.
Build, deploy, monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain production services, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, and operational support.
Contribute to platform architecture, technical documentation, shared development patterns, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
Work with external engineering partners to transition platform capabilities into internally owned, documented, maintainable production environments, including reusable code, tests, and operational runbooks.
Collaborate with AI Engineering, Data & AI Platform, enterprise architecture, security, integration engineering, and engineering teams in India to align solutions with organizational standards and business objectives.
Participate in special projects and perform other duties as assigned to advance AI platform capabilities and business priorities.