Founding Backend Software Engineer

Role details

ABOUT THE ROLE Join an early-stage AI video team as a founding backend engineer. You will lead backend architecture and development for systems that support generative video products and agentic workflows. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design and build scalable backend systems for AI-powered video generation. - Develop infrastructure for agentic workflows, video pipelines, reinforcement learning loops, and real-time data processing. - Own distributed systems architecture, improving reliability through automated testing, performance benchmarks, and end-to-end observability. - Partner with researchers, engineers, and designers to deliver product features and APIs. - Set technical direction and engineering standards while contributing high-quality code. - Document systems, define agent skills, and communicate technical decisions across the team. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - Five to ten years of backend software engineering experience, including work at an early-stage or high-growth startup. - Industry experience building scalable 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. - Professional experience with TypeScript and AWS, including services such as S3, Lambda, RDS, SQS, or ECS. - Strong fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, and system design, applied in professional engineering work. - Experience serving as a technical lead, setting direction and standards while remaining hands-on. - A formal degree, fluent English, and authorization to work without visa sponsorship. 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.