Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI

About Fora Fora is the modern travel agency , empowering anyone with a passion for travel to build a thriving advisory business. We're modernizing the $100B+ travel agency industry by combining powerful technology, data, and community to enable thousands of entrepreneurs to build on our platform. Our business-in-a-box platform gives travel entrepreneurs everything they need to launch and scale, from cutting-edge tools and personalized training to a vibrant community and exclusive industry partnerships. At the heart of it all is our mission: to help the next generation of travel entrepreneurs turn their love for travel into a fulfilling career , whether full‑time or part‑time. We believe that everyone, from seasoned professionals to first‑time advisors, can build something both profitable and personal. Founded in 2021 by seasoned entrepreneurs, Fora has grown steadily since, expanding to a team of 200+ full‑time employees based in downtown New York City . In 2025, we announced our $60 million Series B and C investment rounds , led by Thrive Capital and Insight Partners , with participation by previous investors including Forerunner and Heartcore Capital. We've also been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Startup 2024, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2025 and 2023, and Built In 2025 Best Places to Work. We're building the first truly unified platform for all travel needs—leveraging the best of human expertise and technology to transform how people plan and book travel. About The Role We’re looking for a seasoned Senior / Staff Backend Engineer to help build Fora’s fast growing suite of AI‑driven products and infrastructure. Our ideal candidate is someone who follows AI closely and can tell which models and frameworks are worth using and which won’t last; has built, shipped, triaged, and optimized something that uses LLMs (in production or on the side); and has experience working in ambiguity, on top of APIs and SDKs that change every few weeks. Most travel agents can’t scale past $1M / year in business before they need to make their first hire. By giving advisors a day‑one assistant to delegate entire workflows to, we believe they should be able to solo‑operate $100M / year businesses. Our current focus is on building Via, an AI co‑pilot built into our advisor portal. Via takes on time‑consuming tasks so advisors can move faster, stay more organized, and glean insights into their business that they couldn’t ever before, freeing them to do what they love: building client relationships, curating unforgettable trips, and growing their business. This role tackles challenges across the AI stack including: Building and expanding our suite of MCP tools; tuning our agent harness and orchestration layer for quality, cost, and speed; and building evaluations and observability that let us ship changes to a non‑deterministic system with confidence; and much much more. Key Responsibilities Partner with the team’s Product Manager and Designer to define and prioritize Fora’s Applied AI roadmap, turning ambiguous goals into shippable agent capabilities Help design and build our MCP tooling – exposing Fora’s data and service layers through permission‑aware MCP tools that agents can call on an advisor’s behalf, with the proper guardrails in place so that we only ever act on the right data at the right time Build and harden our agent orchestration – tool‑calling loops, streaming responses, multi‑step workflows, retries and guardrails, and the contracts between Fora’s advisor portal and the AI service Continue improving the reliability of a non‑deterministic system by designing evals, regression suites, tracing, and logging event metrics so we can measure quality, catch tool‑call drift, and ship prompt, model, and tool changes with less risk Focus on performance, latency, architecture, and clean code—advisors feel every millisecond of a streamed response and every wrong tool call Collaborate with engineers across the company to define end‑to‑end solutions that span the AI services, the core Django platform, and our portal frontend Take features from 0 → 1, owning an entire solution from design to implementation to delivery and beyond Help establish the patterns, primitives, and best practices for Applied AI at Fora as the teams surface area grows Requirements Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience 5+ years experience in backend web development 3+ years experience with Python, using Django / Flask / Alternative High API and distributed‑systems design skills, with strong fundamentals in relational databases and ORMs Genuine curiosity and drive to go deep and stay up to date on applied AI Ability to be a team player, with strong communication and collaboration skills An entrepreneurial mindset and comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration Strongly Preferred Hands‑on experience shipping LLM‑powered features in production: MCP tools, agentic loops, structured outputs, streaming (SSE), prompt design, retrieval, evals Familiarity with the modern agent stack: the Model Context Protocol (MCP), LLM provider SDKs (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI), and agent / eval frameworks Experience designing evaluation and observability for non‑deterministic AI systems (offline evals, LLM‑as‑judge, tracing, prompt / version tracking) Daily use of AI coding tools as part of how you build Experience with async task and streaming infrastructure (Celery, RabbitMQ, or similar) AWS experience Kubernetes experience Compensation Compensation for this role varies based on experience, with an indicative range of $155K–$225K + equity. Final compensation will depend on the level at which the candidate is hired, as we’re considering multiple levels for this role. Unlimited vacation Health Insurance (including an option completely covered by Fora HQ) Dental & Vision Insurance Wellhub Memberships 401k plan with company match Commuter Benefits Supplemental Life Insurance Stock Options This role is based in New York City with a hybrid WFH & office schedule (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are our Tribeca in‑office days, with flexibility for Wednesday and Friday at your preference). Our Values We’re forging our own path Fora has always been about driving change within the industry. We’re not interested in maintaining the status quo. We’re stronger together Community is our cornerstone and collective power is our strength. We believe we can all go further when we operate together, using our combined leverage to unlock better opportunities and outcomes for our advisors, partners, and travelers. We believe in technology We believe technology is an answer to some of the most fundamental challenges the travel industry faces. We believe advancements in AI, bold investments in our platforms, and a world‑class data infrastructure will transform the work of our advisors and our partners, while creating better travel experiences for travelers. We’re here to serve We operate in service of our community and believe that when they’re empowered to focus on what they do best, we all win. It’s why we relentlessly advocate for our advisors and prioritize their best interest every step of the way. We mean business Fora is equal parts fun, meaningful work and serious travel business. We’re unlocking opportunities for thousands of travel entrepreneurs, delivering a stream of high‑quality guests at scale for our partners, and providing a superior travel experience for our travelers. It’s a better equation for the future of our industry.

WORK AUTHORIZATION

Authorization to work in the United States is required for full‑time roles based in our New York City office. Fora is unable to sponsor or assist with U.S. work authorization. Roles based outside of the United States are not subject to this requirement.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Fora is committed to an equitable hiring process and an inclusive work environment. BIPOC and traditionally underrepresented candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. We will not discriminate and will take action to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or any other characteristic protected by law. #J-18808-Ljbffr Traveltechessentialist