Staff Backend Engineer
Description
Staff Backend Engineer
Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site, 5 days/week)
Company Stage of Funding: Series A ($60M+ raised)
Office Type: On-site
Salary: $290,000 – $350,000 + Competitive Equity
Visa: Visa sponsorship and transfers available
Company Description
Our client is building next-generation real-time AI infrastructure powering enterprise-grade customer automation.
Their platform enables AI agents to handle highly complex customer interactions across voice, chat, and email in regulated, high-stakes environments where reliability, compliance, and scale are critical.
Already deployed with Fortune 500 customers, they are rapidly scaling toward becoming the foundational AI platform for enterprise automation.
This is an opportunity to join a fast-scaling AI infrastructure company at a pivotal inflection point and shape the technical direction of systems operating at massive scale.
What You Will Do
Lead architecture decisions across critical backend systems
Design scalable infrastructure for real-time AI agent orchestration
Own ambiguous, high-impact technical initiatives
Drive backend platform evolution as systems scale
Solve complex distributed systems challenges
Build highly available systems operating at enterprise scale
Identify technical gaps before they become operational risks
Drive technical strategy across multiple engineering domains
Set standards for system design, code quality, and operational excellence
Write production code and ship hands-on
Mentor engineers through technical collaboration
Influence engineering direction across teams
Improve system reliability, observability, and performance
Architect systems balancing speed, scale, reliability, and complexity
Ideal Candidate Background
7+ years of backend or distributed systems engineering experience
Staff-level technical ownership experience
Strong architectural decision-making capability
Deep backend systems expertise
Experience building large-scale production infrastructure
Hands-on coding excellence
Strong distributed systems fundamentals
Experience operating high-availability production systems
Strong technical judgment
Track record leading complex technical initiatives
Experience influencing engineering organizations through technical leadership
Strong Signals
Staff / Principal engineering experience
High-growth infrastructure startup experience
Distributed systems / platform engineering expertise
Real-time systems experience
Enterprise-scale backend infrastructure
Python backend depth
AWS / Kubernetes expertise
Postgres and data systems architecture
High-throughput systems design
Operational excellence / observability leadership
Strong mentorship through technical execution
Infrastructure scaling through hypergrowth
Fast-moving startup adaptability
High agency and systems thinking
Bias for building over advising
Compensation and Benefits
Base salary: $290,000 – $350,000
Competitive equity
Visa sponsorship support
Full health / dental / vision
Meals and office perks
Wellness allowance
Commuter benefits
Work directly on foundational AI infrastructure
Massive ownership and architectural influence
High-impact role at a critical scaling stage
Why Join
This is a chance to shape the backend systems powering enterprise-scale AI automation.
You’ll own architectural decisions that directly impact platform scale, reliability, and technical direction while staying deeply hands-on.
If you want staff-level ownership at a rapidly scaling AI infrastructure company solving genuinely hard systems problems, this offers rare technical leverage and impact.