Founding Backend Software Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE Join an early-stage AI video team as a founding backend engineer, helping build the systems behind generative video products. You will provide technical leadership on a small team and establish strong engineering practices as the product and infrastructure grow. 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 benchmarks, and end-to-end observability. - Partner with research, engineering, and design teammates to develop product features and APIs. - Write production code, set technical direction and engineering guidelines, and raise the team's engineering standards. - Document systems and technical decisions clearly in a fast-moving, on-site environment. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - Five to ten years of backend software engineering experience, including experience at an early-stage or high-growth startup. - Professional experience building scalable backend and distributed systems, including large-scale data processing, information retrieval, or asynchronous workflows. - At least one year of industry experience designing and building agentic systems, LLMs, or generative AI products. - Industry experience with TypeScript and AWS; familiarity with S3, Lambda, RDS, SQS, ECS, FastAPI, Docker, and CI/CD is relevant. - Strong fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, and system design, applied in professional backend work. - Experience serving as a technical lead, setting direction and code standards while remaining hands-on. - A formal degree, fluent English, and work authorization that does not require visa sponsorship. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Base salary: $225,000 to $275,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in San Francisco, California.