Backend Engineer — High-Volume Data Processing

Location: Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
Work Arrangement: Onsite, 5 days per week (required)
Employment Type: Full-time
Base Salary: $220,000–$300,000
Equity: Competitive equity package
Visa: Open to OPT and H-1B transfers; additional sponsorship may beconsidered
Relocation: Up to $10,000 in relocation assistance

About the Opportunity

A rapidly growing AI and data company is building the datainfrastructure that powers next-generation AI models. The company works withproprietary enterprise data, transforming information generated throughreal-world business operations into de-identified datasets for leading AIresearch organizations.

Having grown from $0 to a multi-eight-figure annualized runrate within months, the business is scaling rapidly with a lean engineeringteam of approximately five people.

This is an opportunity to join at an early stage, takemeaningful ownership of mission-critical systems, and directly influence thearchitecture and reliability of a high-impact data-processing platform.

The team is seeking a Backend Engineer to build andevolve the systems that transform sensitive enterprise information intohigh-quality, AI-training-ready datasets.

The core focus is on the processing logic applied to thedata itself , rather than traditional data engineering, ETL, orinfrastructure work centered primarily on moving data between systems.

What You'll Do

• Design,build, and scale multi-stage, high-volume data-processing pipelines thatde-identify sensitive enterprise data from collaboration tools, email,cloud storage, code repositories, and project-management systems.
• Ownbackend systems end-to-end, from architecture and implementation throughdebugging, correctness validation, production monitoring, and recovery.
• Developsafeguards to detect silent failures, duplicate outputs, stale data, andother data-quality issues before customer delivery.
• Buildreliable mechanisms for retries, checkpoints, partial failures, replay,backfills, and rollbacks across asynchronous workflows, batch workers,queues, and object storage.
• Developinternal tools and dashboards to monitor pipeline performance, investigatedata quality, and inform release decisions.
• Partnerwith ML, full-stack, platform, and security engineers to support new datamodalities and expand processing capabilities.
• Improvethe reliability, observability, and scalability of systems handlingcomplex and sensitive datasets.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 3–10years of software engineering experience , with direct ownership ofproduction backend systems.
• Demonstratedexperience shipping and operating production software, ideally involvingmulti-stage, high-volume data-processing pipelines.
• Relevantundergraduate STEM degree from a top-30 U.S. institution.
• Strongunderstanding of distributed and asynchronous backend systems, including:
• Queues,workers, and concurrency
• Idempotencyand retry strategies
• Partialfailures and fault tolerance
• Recovery,replay, and data consistency
• Meaningfulfull-time experience at an early-stage or high-growth startup, withdemonstrated ownership, adaptability, and comfort operating in ambiguousenvironments.
• Strongproficiency in a general-purpose backend programming language.
• Abilityand willingness to work onsite five days per week in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY.

Important: The undergraduate education requirementand five-day onsite requirement are firm. Candidates who do not meet bothcriteria will not be considered.

Technical Environment

The current technology stack includes:

Python, AWS, Airflow, AWS Batch, SQS, S3, DynamoDB, andPostgreSQL

Python experience is not mandatory. Strong backend engineerswith experience in Go, Rust, Java, or other general-purpose languages are encouraged to apply.

• AWSand cloud-based backend systems
• Batchprocessing and workflow orchestration
• NaturalLanguage Processing (NLP) and Named Entity Recognition (NER)
• Distributedsystems and asynchronous processing
• Dataquality, correctness, and production reliability
• Internaltooling, monitoring, and observability

The team values engineers who think beyond implementation.Ideal candidates enjoy understanding how data-processing systems behave,building tools to investigate performance and quality, diagnosing complexfailures, and solving problems across the entire workflow.

A backend-focused engineer with some full-stack experiencecan also be a strong fit.

Experience That Stands Out

Candidates may be particularly well suited to this role ifthey bring:

• Experienceat a highly regarded engineering organization combined with meaningfulstartup experience.
• Aclear record of career progression and increasing technical ownership.
• Hands-onAWS experience.
• Experiencebuilding or operating batch-processing pipelines and workfloworchestration systems.
• Experiencedeveloping internal tools, dashboards, or observability systems fordata-processing workflows.
• Astrong understanding of production failure modes, data correctness,recovery strategies, and system reliability.
• Theability to take a broad, ambiguous problem and deliver a reliableend-to-end solution.

Who May Not Be a Fit

This position is less suited to candidates whose experienceis primarily focused on:

• Traditionaldata engineering, data platforms, or infrastructure work centered onmoving data between systems.
• ETLdevelopment using tools such as Databricks, without substantial ownershipof the underlying processing logic.
• Frontend-heavyfull-stack development without significant backend engineering depth.
• Large-companyengineering environments without meaningful early-stage or high-growthstartup experience, unless the candidate's technical background isdirectly relevant.
• Startupexposure limited mainly to internships or short-term engagements.

Team & Culture

You'll join a small, high-performing engineering teamoperating in a fast-moving environment with significant customer demand andsubstantial room to influence the product and technical direction.

The team emphasizes:

• First-principlesproblem-solving: Understand the underlying challenge and build theright solution.
• Ownershipand accountability: Take responsibility for systems and outcomes fromstart to finish.
• Biastoward action: Move quickly, experiment, and learn through execution.
• Engineeringexcellence: Deliver reliable, high-quality work that meets a hightechnical bar.
• Humilityand collaboration: Support teammates, share knowledge, and worktogether toward common goals.
• Outcome-drivenexecution: Prioritize meaningful results over activity or outputalone.

With a very small engineering team, this role offerssignificant responsibility, close collaboration, and the opportunity to helpshape critical systems as the business scales.

Compensation & Benefits

• BaseSalary: $220,000–$300,000
• Equity: Competitive equity package
• Medical,Dental & Vision: 100% covered
• PaidTime Off: Unlimited PTO
• RelocationAssistance: Up to $10,000

Visa & Relocation Support

The company is open to visa transfers, including OPT andH-1B transfers .

Additional visa sponsorship may be considered forexceptional candidates, depending on individual circumstances. Sponsorship isnot guaranteed and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Candidates relocating to New York may be eligible for up to$10,000 in relocation assistance.

Interview Process

The following stages begin after a candidate has beensubmitted to the hiring team. Agency screening and the initial resume revieware not counted as interview stages.

Stage 1 — Introductory Call (30 minutes)

A conversation with the hiring manager covering yourbackground, motivations, experience, and alignment with the role.

Stage 2 — System Design (1 hour)

A distributed-systems and data-processing exercise focusedon architecture, technical tradeoffs, scalability, and correctness inhigh-volume backend pipelines.

Stage 3 — Take-Home Technical Assessment (A few hours)

An independent, practical backend coding exercise evaluatingengineering fundamentals and hands-on problem-solving. The engineering teamwill review the completed submission.

Stage 4 — Final Onsite Interviews (2 hours)

An onsite session at the Dumbo, Brooklyn office withengineering and leadership. The final round evaluates technical depth,problem-solving, and team fit while giving candidates an opportunity to meetthe team and learn more about the business.

Travel Support: Candidates who are not currentlybased in New York will be flown in and provided with accommodation for thefinal onsite interview.