Senior Backend Cloud Engineer

Kai is the AI company rebuilding cybersecurity for the machine-speed era. Founded by second time founders and trusted by Fortune 500 enterprises, Kai is building a future where security has no categories, no silos, and no human speed bottlenecks. The Kai Agentic AI Platform replaces fragmented, human-limited workflows with agentic AI systems that continuously contextualize, assess, reason, and execute security work at machine speed - making human defenders, superhuman.

Why Join Kai

• Well-funded: With $125M raised, we have the capital, runway, and resolve to rebuild cybersecurity from first principles.

• Proven: We've earned the trust of Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, and we're just getting started. Their confidence in Kai reflects what we've built: an AI-powered cybersecurity platform that performs at the scale and speed the enterprise demands.

• Experienced founders: Our founding team consists of second-time entrepreneurs, each with over 20 years of experience in the cybersecurity industry. Their proven expertise and vision drive our ambitious goals.

• World-class leadership team: Our Heads of AI, Engineering, and Product bring extensive experience from some of the world's most influential companies, ensuring top-tier mentorship, direction, and vision.

• Frontier AI Applied Research Team: Our researchers operate at the leading edge of agentic AI systems, translating breakthrough capabilities into real-world cybersecurity applications.

• Generous compensation: We offer highly competitive salaries, equity options, and a supportive work environment. Your contributions will be valued and rewarded as we grow together.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams building cloud backends and data pipelines.
• Lead technical delivery from architecture and design to implementation, testing, deployment, and operations.
• Work with product and design teams to deliver performant and reliable user experiences for backend services and APIs.
• Champion software development best practices, including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and test automation.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and maintainability of backend and cloud systems.
• Foster a culture of ownership, learning, and continuous improvement within the engineering team.

Must Haves:

• 7+ years of experience as a cloud or backend engineer.
• Strong experience designing APIs and building asynchronous systems with robust error handling.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, including serverless architectures.
• Experience with Azure services and Infrastructure as Code tools such as API Management, Azure Functions, Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Azure Active Directory, or Bicep/Terraform.
• Familiarity with data pipelines and cloud-native data streaming tools such as Kinesis.
• Strong Python experience for backend services, automation, and tooling.
• Experience with AWS services and Infrastructure-as-Code tools, such as API Gateway, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, IAM, and CDK.
• Knowledge of observability, tracing, and system performance best practices for distributed backend systems.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate with distributed teams.

Nice to Haves:

• Golang development for backend services.
• Experience with data streaming tools such as Kafka.
• Designing access control systems, such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
• Experience with version control, CI/CD, and build systems (e.g., GitHub Actions).
• Familiarity with compliance and security standards such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, or CPRA in cloud environments.
• Startup experience and hustle.

Why You'll Succeed

• Attention to detail and craft: You care about pixel-perfect UIs and cohesive user experiences.
• Track record of high-velocity delivery: You move fast but don't break things.
• Interest in scientific research, AI/LLMs, and a passion for leveraging technology to advance human knowledge.

Work Location

This is a 5-day-a-week in-office role based in North San Jose, CA.