Founding Backend Software Engineer

About the Role

Join a small team building generative AI technology for video creation. As a founding backend engineer, you will shape core systems and technical practices while working closely with research, engineering, and design.

What You'll Do

• Design and develop scalable backend systems for 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 benchmarking, and end-to-end observability.
• Partner with researchers, engineers, and designers to develop product features and APIs.
• Set technical direction, write production code, establish engineering guidelines, and raise code quality across the team.
• Document systems, define agent skills, and communicate technical decisions clearly.

What We're Looking For

• 5 to 10 years of backend software engineering experience, including work at early-stage or high-growth startups.
• Industry experience building scalable backend and distributed systems, including large-scale data processing, information retrieval, and asynchronous workflows.
• At least 12 months of hands-on industry experience designing agentic systems and working with LLMs or generative AI.
• Professional experience with TypeScript and AWS; experience with S3, Lambda, RDS, SQS, ECS, FastAPI, Docker, and CI/CD is relevant.
• Strong fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, and system design, applied to backend engineering work.
• Experience acting as a technical lead, setting direction and engineering standards while contributing code.
• A formal degree and fluent written and spoken English.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary

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

Location

On-site in San Francisco, California.