Senior Backend Engineer (Decision & Reasoning Systems)

Senior Backend Engineer (Decision & Reasoning Systems)

Location: India (Remote)

Company: US-based engineering software startup

About the role

Were building a backend-first engineering platform that encodes real-world constraints, tradeoffs, and decision logic into software. This is not a demo-driven AI role. You will design and implement the core backend logic that powers intelligent product decisions.

This is an early-stage role with real ownership and ambiguity. Backend comes first; frontend will be hired later.

What youll work on

• Designing and implementing backend APIs in Python
• Building decision/selection logic based on constraints and preferences
• Structuring systems that scale from parts subsystems full systems
• Writing clean, maintainable, testable code
• Supporting an AI-first product flow via well-defined backend contracts

What were looking for

Required

• Strong backend experience in Python (FastAPI, Django, or similar)
• Proven experience building production backend systems end-to-end
• Ability to reason about constraints, tradeoffs, and edge cases
• Comfort working with ambiguity and minimal specifications
• Public GitHub profile demonstrating backend/API work (clean repos with real logic)

Nice to have

• Experience with system design, optimization, or applied algorithms
• Experience evolving data models and APIs over time
• Docker and basic cloud familiarity

This role is NOT for you if

• Youre primarily an ML research or GenAI demo engineer
• You prefer frontend-heavy work
• You have no public code demonstrating backend systems
• You expect fully specified tasks from day one

Hiring process

• Short screening
• Paid technical trial (1015 hours) focused on backend decision logic
• Offer based on execution, not interviews

Compensation

• 3045 LPA (India-based)
• Long-term upside via phantom equity (4-year vesting, 1-year cliff)
• Exact offer based on experience and trial performance

How to apply

Please include:

• A link to your GitHub profile
• (Optional) One repo youre most proud of and why

We intentionally keep the frontend thin at this stage. If you enjoy building the enginenot the paint jobyoull fit well here.