Founding Backend Software Engineer

About the Role

Join an early-stage AI video company as a founding backend engineer and technical lead. You will build the systems behind its AI-powered video products and help set engineering standards for a small, high-caliber team.

What You'll Do

• Design and develop scalable backend systems that support AI-powered video creation.

• Build 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 benchmarks, and end-to-end observability.

• Collaborate with research, engineering, and design teammates to develop product features and APIs.

• Set technical direction and engineering standards through strong code, clear documentation, and effective communication.

What We're Looking For

• Five to ten years of backend software engineering experience, including work at early-stage or high-growth startups.

• Experience designing scalable backend and distributed systems, large-scale data processing, information retrieval, and asynchronous workflows.

• At least 12 months of industry experience building agentic systems or working with LLMs and generative AI.

• Industry experience with TypeScript and AWS; familiarity with tools such as S3, Lambda, RDS, SQS, ECS, FastAPI, Docker, and CI/CD is relevant.

• Strong fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, and system design, along with a formal degree.

• Experience as a technical lead setting direction and code standards, and fluency in written and spoken English.

Compensation & Benefits

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

Location

On-site, five days per week in San Francisco, California.