Founding Backend Engineer

  • San Francisco, California, United States
  • Full-Time
  • On-Site
  • 150,000-300,000 USD / Year

Job Description:

San Francisco, CA · On-site · Full-time
Compensation: $150,000–$300,000 + 0.1%–1% equity

About the Company

A Seed-stage AI company (founded 2024, $7.5M raised) building production-grade systems that convert complex documents into LLM-ready data for AI agents and large language models. The product preserves document structure and hierarchy while capturing domain-specific context for high-stakes workflows across Finance, Legal, and Healthcare, and is already deploying with enterprise customers. Founded 2024 · 1–10 people · Industry: AI Tools.

The Role

A founding, backend & infrastructure-heavy engineering role on a small, talent-dense team. You'll own production systems end-to-end and partner closely with the founders and research team to turn research prototypes into production-grade, scalable systems.

What you'll be doing

  • Architect, build, and scale core backend systems powering document intelligence and VLM-based workflows
  • Own production infrastructure end-to-end: deployments, monitoring, performance, reliability
  • Design and operate high-throughput, low-latency services in real production environments
  • Take systems from R&D → production → enterprise scale
  • Build and maintain cloud and on-prem deployments (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm) for enterprise customers
  • Establish best practices for CI/CD, observability, debugging, and incident response

Tech stack: Python (required); C++/Rust (plus); distributed systems (microservices, queues, Redis); cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure); Docker, Kubernetes, Helm; Terraform / Pulumi

Requirements

  • 2-5 years of experience
  • Ability to work in-person at San Francisco office
  • Hands-on experience building backend infrastructure

Green Flags

  • Graduated from top-tier schools (IIT Bombay, Stanford, etc.)
  • Very early stage startup experience (first 1-3 engineers)
  • Experience at companies with strong technical DNA
  • Research experience

Red Flags

  • Only big tech experience (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) without startup exposure
  • Experience only on abstract/high-level work without hands-on technical involvement
  • 10+ years experience (too senior, not hands-on enough)
  • Only enterprise/large company experience without touching core technical elements

Why Join

  • A founding technical seat that defines the engineering archetype and sets the team's technical ceiling
  • True end-to-end ownership across backend architecture, infrastructure, deployment, and reliability
  • Real enterprise traction in high-stakes verticals (Finance, Legal, Healthcare)

Details

  • Location: San Francisco, CA
  • Work policy: In-person
  • Compensation: $150,000–$300,000 + equity
  • Visa sponsorship: H-1B, O-1, OPT
  • Employment type: Full-time