Founding Backend Software Engineer

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.