Quick overview
Job description
About the Role
Join an early-stage AI video company as a founding backend engineer, building the systems that power its generative video platform. You will serve as a technical lead on a small team, shaping backend architecture and setting a strong standard for engineering quality.
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.
Write production code, set engineering guidelines, and help raise the team's technical standards.
Document systems, define agent skills, and communicate technical decisions clearly.
What We're Looking For
Five to ten years of backend software engineering experience, including experience at startups or high-growth companies.
Professional experience building scalable backend and distributed systems, including large-scale data processing, information retrieval, and asynchronous workflows.
Industry experience with TypeScript and AWS.
At least one year of industry experience designing and building agentic systems, LLMs, or generative AI products.
Strong foundations in algorithms, data structures, and system design, applied to professional backend engineering.
Experience acting as a technical lead, writing code, setting technical direction, and establishing code standards.
A formal degree and fluent English communication skills.
Experience with AI engineering in technology companies and, ideally, backend systems involving video generation or related real-time workflows.
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.