Senior Backend Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Senior Backend EngineerAbout the Role

We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to own and scale the core infrastructure powering an AI-driven logistics platform.

This is a high-impact, high-autonomy engineering role focused on designing and operating the systems that ingest, process, and serve real-time logistics data across distributed services, AI pipelines, queues, databases, and search infrastructure.

You'll help define the technical direction of the backend architecture, work directly with the founding team, and play a foundational role in scaling the platform as the company grows.

This role is ideal for engineers who thrive in fast-moving startup environments, enjoy solving complex systems problems, and prefer owning outcomes over simply completing tickets.

About the Company

The company is building a next-generation AI platform for logistics and operational workflows.

Backed by leading venture capital firms, the founding team comes from Google, LinkedIn, and Salesforce. The company has already achieved strong product traction with meaningful month-over-month revenue growth and customers processing significant operational volume daily.

This is not an idea-stage startup — the platform is already powering real-world operations at scale.

What You'll Do

• Architect and scale distributed backend systems and event-driven infrastructure
• Design queue pipelines, communication hubs, and observability layers
• Build resilient systems using retry strategies, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation
• Own database reliability, schema design, indexing, and query optimization
• Build and maintain data pipelines that synchronize systems at scale
• Develop AI-powered search infrastructure for real-time logistics workflows
• Define backend service boundaries and engineering standards
• Collaborate directly with founders on roadmap and technical direction
• Help hire and mentor future backend engineers as the team grows

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience
• Experience operating in high-growth startup or large-scale production environments
• Strong track record owning backend systems end-to-end
• Experience making architectural trade-offs in fast-moving environments
• Strong systems-thinking and backend engineering fundamentals
• Ability to work independently with minimal structure or oversight
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and driving technical decisions
• Startup mindset with strong ownership and accountability
• Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate
• Comfortable working onsite full-time (5 days/week)

Visa Support

• H-1B transfers supported
• OPT candidates welcome
• No new sponsorship available

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with distributed systems and event-driven architectures
• Experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, or similar queueing systems
• Familiarity with AI/ML infrastructure or large-scale document processing
• Experience with Elasticsearch, pgvector, or modern search infrastructure
• Exposure to enterprise software requirements including security, compliance, and data retention
• Experience at a high-growth Series A/B startup or as a founding engineer
• Logistics, customs, or regulated industry software experience

Compensation & BenefitsCompensation

• Base Salary: $210,000 – $285,000 USD

Additional Details

• High-impact role with significant ownership
• Direct collaboration with founders and technical leadership
• Opportunity to shape backend architecture from an early stage
• Fast-moving engineering culture with meaningful autonomy

Why This Role Stands Out

This is an opportunity to help build the foundational infrastructure behind an AI-native logistics platform already operating at meaningful scale. You'll work on technically challenging distributed systems problems, influence architectural direction early, and have direct impact on product performance, reliability, and scalability.