Staff Backend Engineer

Type: Full-time

• On-site (5 days/week)
• San Francisco, CA Compensation: $290K–$350K base + competitive equity Visa sponsorship: Available — sponsorship and transfers supported
  
  
  

About The Role

We're a fast-growing, venture-backed AI company building real-time AI agents for enterprise customer experience — agents that resolve issues instantly and operate across voice, chat, and email in high-stakes, regulated environments. Our product is already in market with major enterprise customers, processing over a million customer sessions every month.

We're looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to help shape the technical direction of our backend systems. You'll lead complex projects, make architectural decisions that affect the whole platform, and raise the bar for engineering quality across the team. This is a role for someone who wants to build, not just advise — you'll write code, own systems, and ship, while also identifying what the team should be building next and how.

What You'll Be Doing

• System architecture — design how our agent infrastructure evolves as we scale, making tradeoffs between speed, reliability, and complexity.
• Hard technical problems — own the most ambiguous, highest-stakes projects where getting it wrong would hurt the business.
• Technical strategy — identify gaps in our systems before they become problems and build the case for addressing them.

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• Engineering quality — set standards for code review, system design, and operational excellence through your own work, and mentor other engineers through collaboration on real work rather than formal management.
  
  
  

Tech stack: Python, Django, FastAPI, TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, Modal, Kubernetes, Postgres, Next.js

What We're Looking For

Requirements

• 7–15 years of backend/infrastructure engineering experience, with strong Python and distributed systems
• A clear track record of growth and increasing scope/seniority over your career
• Experience at high-growth SaaS startups or top-tier technology companies
• A history of independently owning and driving initiatives to completion without oversight
• System design expertise for scalable, reliable backend platforms

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• Strong Python backend development (Django/FastAPI)
• Currently at, or recently promoted to, staff level (L6/E6 equivalent)
  
  
  

Nice to Have

• CS, Math, or Stats degree from a top university
• Active use of AI coding tools (e.g. Cursor or Claude) in your day-to-day workflow
  
  
  

Logistics

• Salary: $290K–$350K base

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• Equity: Competitive equity
• On-site policy: 5 days/week in-office in San Francisco
• Location: San Francisco, CA — candidates must already be local to the Bay Area; relocation is not available for this role
• Visa sponsorship: Available — sponsorship and transfers supported
• Employment type: Full-time
  
  
  

Interview Process

• Recruiter Screen (30 min) — an initial conversation about your background, experience, and interest in the role.
• Technical Interview: System Design (1 hour) — an architectural interview to assess your ability to design complex, scalable backend systems and articulate technical tradeoffs.
• Final Round (3–4 hours) — a series of interviews with key team members and leadership to evaluate team fit and engineering alignment, including a hands-on AI agent-building exercise.
• Offer