Senior Backend Developer

About Shelf

There is no AI Strategy without a Data Strategy. Getting GenAI to work is mission-critical for most companies but 90% of AI projects havent deployed. Why Poor data quality - it is the #1 obstacle companies have in getting GenAI projects into production.

Weve helped some of the best brands like Glovo Lufthansa Herbalife and Nespresso solve their data issues and deploy their AI strategy with Day 1 ROI.

Simply put Shelf unlocks AI readiness. We provide the core infrastructure that enables GenAI to be deployed at scale. We help companies deliver more accurate GenAI answers by eliminating bad data in documents and files before they go into an LLM and create bad answers.

Shelf is partnered with Microsoft Salesforce Snowflake Databricks OpenAI and other big tech players who are bringing GenAI to the enterprise.

Our mission is to empower humanity with better answers everywhere.

Senior Backend Developer:

As a Backend Engineer at Shelf youll architect and build the distributed systems that make enterprise AI actually work. While others are chasing AI hype were solving the unglamorous but critical problem that determines whether AI succeeds or fails: data quality at scale.

You wont just write code youll design architectures that handle petabytes of unstructured data provision and optimize databases across multiple cloud regions and build services that process millions of documents daily. Every architectural decision you make ripples through to the accuracy of AI systems at companies like Glovo Lufthansa and Nespresso.

This is systems engineering at its most demanding. Youll tackle challenges like building multi-tenant distributed systems with strict data isolation implementing real-time data quality scoring at scale and creating self-healing pipelines that maintain 99.9% uptime. Your services will integrate with everything from enterprise systems to cutting-edge LLMs requiring both deep technical knowledge and pragmatic engineering judgment.

We obsess over backend quality because were building the quality layer for AI itself. When your code elegantly handles edge cases gracefully degrades under load and self-monitors for anomalies youre not just meeting engineering standards - youre directly preventing AI hallucinations and ensuring accurate answers for millions of end users.

Were a product company that ships fast without compromising on lasting quality. Youll work alongside proactive ever-learning engineers in an environment where AI isnt just what we build its how we build.

The best engineers we know are drawn to problems that matter. If youre excited by the challenge of building the infrastructure that makes the AI revolution actually deliver on its promises this role offers the rare combination of technical depth meaningful impact and the prestige of solving problems that the industry hasnt figured out yet.

Responsibilities

• Design efficient database schemas and distributed architectures that elegantly handle multi-tenant data isolation horizontal scaling and fault tolerance
• Create comprehensive technical specifications and architecture diagrams that clearly communicate system design decisions and trade-offs
• Define & maintain SLOs for your services and architect solutions that consistently meet them even under peak load conditions
• Develop modular composable components using leveraging AI coding assistants to accelerate development while maintaining high code quality
• Instrument services for performance metrics track processing throughput and build automated data quality and consistency checks
• Take full ownership of the systems you build monitoring their health optimizing performance and ensuring they scale gracefully as data volumes grow
• Stay current with industry best practices in distributed systems data engineering and AI infrastructureexperiment with new approaches and share your findings with the team
• Contribute to our engineering standards and practices mentor colleagues and actively participate in our culture of continuous learning and improvement
• Build and maintain REST APIs across diverse storage solutions including S3 RDS/PostgreSQL Elasticsearch DynamoDB and modern data warehouses

Requirements

• Over 4 years of professional software engineering experience including more than 1 year specializing in
• Deep understanding of distributed systems concurrency patterns and event-driven architectures
• Hands-on experience with AWS or Azure cloud primitives - youve personally provisioned resources configured services and built scalable systems using the full stack (compute storage messaging databases). Cloud certifications are a plus
• Comfortable working with diverse data stores (SQL and NoSQL) including schema design and performance tuning at scale
• Write well-structured testable code with thoughtful abstractions and interfaces
• Strong problem-solving skills and genuine curiosity - you dont wait for instructions but proactively identify problems and propose solutions. Youre never satisfied with good enough and constantly refine your tools and approaches
• Experience with AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot Claude etc.) and eagerness to push the boundaries of AI-assisted development. Part of this role involves creating AI agents to automate portions of the engineering workflow
• Familiarity with service cataloging and documentation tools like OpsLevel or similar platforms
• Upper-Intermediate or better English skills for technical communication and documentation
• Present your work effectively both verbally and visually creating clear architecture diagrams and well-structured documentation
• Bonus: hands-on experience with NLP unstructured data processing or RAG pipelines
• Bonus: experience with CQRS distributed processing techniques or building ML infrastructure

What Shelf Offers:

• B2B contract
• Company Stock Options
• Hardware: MacBook Pro
• Modern technical stack. Develop open-source software
• Premier AI development environment: GitHub Copilot Claude Code OpenAI Codex TypingMind v0 MCP Servers plus credits for experimenting with emerging AI tools

Why Shelf

• According to MarketWatch in November 2022 the global knowledge management market size was valued at US $405 Billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 18.12% during the forecast period reaching US $1.1 Trillion by 2027
• Our Leadership Team has deep knowledge management and AI domain expertise and enterprise SaaS background to execute this plan
• We have raised over $60 million in funding and our investors include Tiger Global Insight Partners Connecticut Innovations and others
• Our platform has been consistently rated #1 for overall usability by Gartner Digital Markets and has received Easiest to Use Easiest to Admin and Highest Adoption awards from G2. and product of the year and innovation awards from leading publications such as CIO Review.
• We have high velocity growth powered by the most innovative product in our category 3X growth for 3 years in a row
• We now have over 100 employees in multiple U.S. states and European countries and we have ambitious hiring goals over the next year

Our Values:

Quality- Were united by our focus on worldclass Quality. Quality in all things starting with everything that leaves your desk. Everything you touch every email report campaign and piece of code should be outstanding. Your work product should blow people away. Having people look at what youve done and say Wow. Thats the standard here. Remember that how you do anything is how you do everything. Focus on craftsmanshipyour ability to make things better.

Momentum- for us means that you should know that the things youre responsible for are moving forward. When you look around and see something thats stalled get it moving again. We pride ourselves on ball movement. When your boss or team leaves you with something they should return to see measurable progress. Small continuous movement is our recipe for success. Constantly look for how to make the work around you move forward. We want you to initiate solutions ideas and progress. Dont wait for it to come to youreach out and create movement. All the time.

Accountability- We expect every team member to feel that they are accountable for more than anyone might normally expect. Each of us should feel real responsibility for things even at the edge of our control. We consistently share and align on expectations give each other open and respectful feedback and use those two drivers to ensure that every agreement we make with one another is clear and complete.

Hard Work- Were here to do something difficult together. We care intensely about the mission and we expect that from our teammates. That care means that we work hard here. Hard work comes with long hours extra effortand real opportunity at Shelf. Your passion for creating and sustaining output is a part of our DNA. Support each other cheer each other on drive the mission forward. Great teams sustain intense effort together to win.

Learning Agility- Were innovating in one of the fastestmoving spaces in history at a time of accelerating global change. Thats incredibly exciting and requires each of us to commit fully to learning each and every day so that we can be the best at what we do. None of us know everything. All of us can learn anything. Staying open and constantly curious is a key success driver at Shelf. It also requires humility. We prize people who are consistently humble and open to making mistakes and growing from them. Recognize also that learning itself is a skillwe need you to be really good at it. Keep dialing in your own understanding about how you learn best and push yourself to keep growing.

Adapt and Thrive- Overcoming challenges lives deep in our DNA. We have a proud history of understanding and living the reality that obstacles are our opportunitiestheyre the key to our success. Change is a constant in our business and fighting change is counterproductive. We need you to be good at being uncomfortable and understand that discomfort is the key to growth. Cultivate your own ability to adapt and know that struggling well is something youll share with every team youre on at Shelf. Our company stories are about thriving through real difficultytogether.

Win Together- We win or lose as a team. Always. Everything you do here is connected to the rest of the organization. Part of our shared team environment demands full honestyreal candor and directness with one another. We expect you to constantly be thinking about how to support your teammates and the company always acting in service to our shared mission and whats best for the organization as a whole.