Staff Backend Engineer

About the Role

Were looking for a Staff Backend Engineer (8+ years) to architect and lead backend systems that power our core AI data platforms. Youll own large-scale distributed systems, drive backend design strategy, and work across product, infrastructure, and AI teams to deliver resilient, high-performance services.

This is a high-impact IC role for engineers who enjoy solving complex systems problems, mentoring teams, and influencing architecture across multiple domains.

What Youll Do

• Architect and scale backend services that support large-scale data ingestion, transformation, workflow orchestration, and secure delivery pipelines.
• Lead system design and technical roadmapping across projects, ensuring platforms are resilient, extensible, and aligned with long-term goals.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, leading by example in code quality, documentation, and system thinking.
• Own backend performance and reliability, introducing metrics-driven approaches to scale systems efficiently and reduce operational overhead.
• Collaborate across disciplines AI researchers, frontend, data, DevOps, and product teams to design APIs and services with clear boundaries and SLAs.
• Champion platform evolution, identifying and driving initiatives around observability, developer tooling, scalability, and security.
• Influence technical direction across engineering by leading design reviews, promoting best practices, and contributing to internal engineering standards.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience in backend software engineering, with at least 1+ years operating at a staff level or equivalent.
• Proven experience designing and scaling backend systems in production with a strong grasp of distributed systems, microservices, and service-oriented architecture.
• Advanced proficiency in one or more backend languages from Go, Java, and Python.
• Good understanding of cloud-native architectures (AWS, GCP, or Azure), containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Deep knowledge of data modeling, API design (REST/GraphQL/RPC), caching, SDKs, developer tooling and asynchronous systems (queues, event buses).
• Strong understanding of servers, database metrics, and observability.
• Experience implementing secure, observable, and testable systems.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, and deployment tooling (GitHub workflows, CircleCI, etc.).
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; able to drive alignment across teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working on data-intensive SaaS platforms, scalable backend services, or high-throughput data processing systems.
• Familiarity with event-driven and domain-driven design.
• Deep understanding of data structures, algorithms, system design, and architectural patterns.
• Background in leading technical initiatives across multiple teams and contributing to org-level architecture.
• Strong bias for action and ownership; comfortable making architectural decisions with long-term impact.
• Experience in mentoring up to SDE 3 engineers and participating in technical hiring loops.

What Youll Love / Benefits

• Opportunity to build backend systems that are foundational to the future of AI/GenAI.
• High agency environment where your technical leadership directly shapes product outcomes.
• Hybrid flexibility with a culture of deep ownership and collaboration.
• Work accessories and a great work location
• Competitive compensation, medical coverage (self & family), and surprise performance perks.
• Fun team culture with regular hackathons, offsites, and creative engineering challenges