Founding Backend Software Engineer

About the Role

Join an early-stage AI video team as its founding backend engineer. You will lead the design of the backend and agentic infrastructure that powers AI-driven video creation, while helping establish engineering standards for a small, high-caliber team.

What You'll Do

• Design and build scalable backend systems for AI 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.

• Partner with researchers, engineers, and designers to build product features and APIs.

• Set technical direction and engineering standards through strong implementation, 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.

• Industry experience building scalable backend and distributed systems, large-scale data processing, information retrieval, and asynchronous workflows.

• At least 12 months of industry experience designing and building agentic systems, LLMs, or generative AI products.

• Professional experience with TypeScript and AWS, including relevant services such as S3, Lambda, RDS, SQS, or ECS.

• Experience as a technical lead, setting technical direction and code standards for a team.

• A formal degree, strong computer science fundamentals, and fluent English communication skills.

Compensation & Benefits

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

Location

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