Founding Backend Software Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE

Join a small engineering team at an early-stage AI video company as its founding backend engineer. You will lead the design of core backend infrastructure for agentic workflows and video generation, helping set technical direction and engineering standards as the product develops.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Design and build scalable backend systems for AI-powered video products.
• Develop infrastructure for agentic workflows, video generation pipelines, reinforcement learning loops, and real-time data processing.
• Own distributed systems architecture and improve reliability through automated testing, performance benchmarking, and end-to-end observability.
• Work with research, engineering, and design teammates to deliver product features and APIs.
• Write production-quality code, establish engineering guidelines, document technical decisions, and raise team standards.
• Define agent skills and communicate technical decisions clearly in a fast-moving, in-person environment.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Five to ten years of backend software engineering experience, including experience at an early-stage or high-growth startup.
• Professional experience building scalable backend and distributed systems, including large-scale data processing, information retrieval, and asynchronous workflows.
• At least one year of industry experience designing and building agentic systems, LLMs, or generative AI.
• Industry experience with TypeScript and AWS; familiarity with S3, Lambda, RDS, SQS, ECS, FastAPI, Docker, and CI/CD is relevant.
• A formal degree and strong applied foundations in algorithms, data structures, and system design.
• Experience acting as a technical lead, writing code, setting technical direction, and establishing code standards.
• Fluent English communication skills.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Base salary: $225,000 to $275,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

LOCATION

On-site in San Francisco, California.