Founding Backend Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Our client, a fast-growing AI B2B education startup, is hiring a Founding Backend Engineer to own and lead the core systems that make their AI assistant work. This is a high-ownership, high-autonomy role at a company with real paying users and strong institutional backing — where your work will have immediate and visible impact on the product.

• Context retrieval — Design and build performant systems that surface the right information at the right time across a wide range of unstructured data sources, including email, calendar, meetings, and third-party integrations. This is a nuanced retrieval problem that goes well beyond standard search.
• Agentic systems — Architect and ship agents capable of taking real action across tools on behalf of the user. This includes building robust permission models and encoding user preferences so the assistant behaves appropriately in every context.
• Continual learning — Develop the memory and feedback infrastructure that allows the product to improve meaningfully with every user interaction, moving the assistant closer to a true understanding of each individual over time.

Beyond strong backend engineering fundamentals, the ideal candidate is product-minded, comfortable engaging directly with customers, and genuinely excited about the future of AI-powered productivity. You should be at ease making architectural decisions — not just executing against a spec.

Required:

• 3–7 years as a product-minded backend engineer with strong early-stage experience
• Demonstrated track record as a product-minded backend engineer at a Tier 1 venture-backed startup (ideally Series A to C but flexible)
• Strong technical depth with TypeScript and React, LLM APIs, and Electron
• Highly comfortable on the backend (full-stack experience also welcome)
• Genuine interest in engaging with customers and in productivity/workflow automation

Preferred:

• Experience at a productivity startup (e.g., Superhuman, Notion, Airtable, Slack) or workflow automation startup (e.g., legal tech working with unstructured data)
• CS or adjacent STEM degree from a top 15 university