Software Engineer (Backend)

Who is Recruiting from Scratch : 

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Software Engineer (Backend)

Location - San Mateo, CA - (Hybrid, 4 Days Per Week On-site + Fridays Remote)

Compensation - $165,000 – $265,000 Base + Competitive Equity

Visa - Visa Sponsorship Available - (Case-by-case; Transfers and New Petitions Supported)

Company Stage - High-Growth AI Infrastructure Startup ($10M+ Raised)

Industry - AI Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, Developer Tools, Distributed Systems, Open Source, Enterprise SaaS

About the Company

The company is building the future of AI infrastructure by enabling organizations to run and scale AI workloads seamlessly across any cloud or on-premise environment.

Its open-source platform provides a unified control plane for managing AI compute, distributed workloads, and cloud orchestration across providers including AWS, GCP, and Azure. By solving complex challenges around scheduling, portability, reliability, and cost optimization, the platform enables AI teams to efficiently deploy large-scale workloads without being locked into a single cloud provider.

Founded by UC Berkeley PhDs and experienced engineers from leading infrastructure companies, the company has quickly become one of the fastest-growing projects in AI infrastructure with thousands of GitHub stars, hundreds of contributors, and adoption across Fortune 500 companies and leading AI-native organizations.

Backed by strong investors and built by a world-class engineering team with backgrounds from Databricks, Google, Crusoe, ByteDance, and other leading technology companies, the company is entering a major growth phase as demand for AI compute infrastructure continues to accelerate.

As a Software Engineer (Backend), you'll build distributed backend systems, cloud-native infrastructure, compute orchestration platforms, and scalable services that power the future of multi-cloud AI execution.

This is a rare opportunity to join an early-stage AI infrastructure company where you'll work on challenging distributed systems problems, contribute to open-source technology, collaborate directly with founders, and help define the future of cloud computing for AI workloads.

What You'll Do

• Design and build core backend systems powering multi-cloud AI infrastructure


• Develop distributed services, job schedulers, and compute orchestration platforms


• Build scalable backend services that manage AI workloads across AWS, GCP, Azure, and on-prem environments


• Design and implement APIs, microservices, and infrastructure components using Python and Go


• Build reliable control-plane systems supporting cloud resource management and workload execution


• Develop high-performance distributed systems using technologies such as gRPC and Protocol Buffers


• Work on cloud infrastructure platforms involving Kubernetes, Terraform, and containerized workloads


• Improve system reliability, scalability, performance, and observability


• Solve complex engineering challenges around scheduling, parallel computing, and resource optimization


• Collaborate closely with founders, engineers, and users to build impactful infrastructure products


• Engage with open-source communities through contributions, documentation, tutorials, and technical content


• Own backend initiatives from technical design through production deployment

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience Requirements

• 3–8 years of backend software engineering experience


• Experience building and shipping production backend systems


• Experience designing distributed systems or cloud infrastructure platforms


• Experience working on high-ownership engineering teams or startup environments


• Experience building systems that interface with cloud compute, scheduling, or infrastructure platforms


• Demonstrated ability to own complex engineering projects end-to-end


• Strong software engineering fundamentals and problem-solving skills


• Experience working on infrastructure, developer tools, or platform products

Technical Requirements

• Strong Python and/or Go engineering skills


• Experience designing scalable backend architectures and distributed systems


• Experience building production APIs and backend services


• Experience with cloud infrastructure technologies such as AWS, GCP, or Azure


• Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, containers, or cloud-native systems


• Experience with gRPC, Protocol Buffers, microservices, or service-oriented architectures


• Experience building control-plane systems, compute platforms, or orchestration services


• Strong understanding of parallel programming, scheduling, and resource management


• Experience with databases, data modeling, and backend performance optimization


• Strong debugging, reliability, and production engineering skills


• Ability to work across multiple layers of the infrastructure stack

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or related technical field required


• Strong academic background from a Top 30 Computer Science program preferred

Soft Skills

• Strong communication skills


• High ownership mentality


• Excellent collaboration with Engineering, Founders, and Users


• Comfortable operating in ambiguity


• Self-directed and proactive


• Strong problem-solving mindset


• Startup mentality


• Ability to move quickly while maintaining engineering quality


• Passion for infrastructure and developer-focused products


• Strong technical curiosity and learning ability

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $165,000 – $265,000


• Competitive Equity Package


• Hybrid Work Environment (4 Days On-site, Fridays Remote)


• Visa Sponsorship Available (Case-by-case)


• Direct collaboration with founders and technical leadership


• Opportunity to build foundational AI infrastructure


• High-impact backend engineering role


• Exposure to distributed systems, cloud computing, Kubernetes, and AI workloads


• Opportunity to contribute to a rapidly growing open-source project


• Work with engineers from Databricks, Google, and leading infrastructure companies


• Rapid career growth opportunities


• Collaborative, high-performing engineering culture

Why Join

This is an opportunity to build the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI applications.

You'll work on distributed systems, cloud orchestration, AI compute management, and multi-cloud infrastructure while solving some of the hardest challenges in modern computing.

As a Backend Software Engineer, you'll have significant ownership over critical infrastructure systems while collaborating with world-class engineers and founders to define the future of AI-native cloud platforms.