About this role
Staff Backend Software Engineer — AI Platform
Remote (US) | $200K–$280K Base + Equity
The Opportunity
An early-stage, venture-backed AI company is building a platform that transforms how physical environments are designed and managed. Its technology combines computer vision, spatial intelligence, and agentic AI to turn real-world spaces into interactive digital environments.
The company has approximately 20 employees and is already working with customers ranging from smaller businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises.
We're looking for a Staff Backend Software Engineer to take ownership of the platform's backend architecture. This is a highly autonomous, hands-on role working directly with engineering leadership, the CEO, and a small team of talented engineers.
You'll have the opportunity to architect and build foundational systems rather than simply maintain or extend an existing architecture.
What You'll Do
- Own backend architecture, technical direction, and implementation across the platform.
- Design scalable APIs, database schemas, and data models supporting complex applications.
- Architect distributed systems with asynchronous workflows, message queues, event-driven processes, and data pipelines.
- Build infrastructure supporting real-time collaboration, document versioning, and multi-tenant SaaS applications.
- Integrate AI and computer vision capabilities into reliable, production-grade backend services.
- Provision and manage cloud infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code tools.
- Collaborate directly with product, frontend, and AI engineers to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions.
- Establish engineering standards and help shape the technical foundation as the company grows.
What We're Looking For
- Approximately 6–14 years of professional backend engineering experience, with flexibility for exceptional candidates outside that range.
- Demonstrated experience personally architecting and building complex systems or products from 0 to 1.
- Strong experience designing APIs, database schemas, and backend data models.
- Hands-on experience with distributed systems, asynchronous processing, messaging, queues, or workflow orchestration.
- Experience at an early-stage startup or high-growth venture-backed technology company.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure and infrastructure as code.
- Ability to operate independently, make significant technical decisions, and remain deeply hands-on.
- Strong communication skills and experience working directly with technical and business stakeholders.
Preferred Experience
- Real-time collaborative applications or multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
- Complex backend platforms involving data pipelines, workflow engines, or event-driven architectures.
- Prior founding engineer, technical lead, or staff-level architectural ownership.
- Experience building backend infrastructure for AI-enabled products.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
Technology Environment
TypeScript, Python, Go, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Temporal, AWS, and Pulumi.
Experience with comparable technologies is welcome; expertise in every tool is not required.
Compensation & Location
- Base salary: $200,000–$280,000
- Equity: Competitive equity package
- Location: Fully remote within the United States
- Working hours: Meaningful overlap with US Eastern Time
Why Join?
This is an opportunity to take ownership of a company's core backend architecture at an early stage while working on genuinely challenging technical problems spanning distributed systems, real-time collaboration, multi-tenancy, computer vision, and agentic AI.
You'll have significant technical autonomy, direct access to company leadership, and an opportunity to shape how a production platform evolves as the business scales.