Senior Backend Engineer

SENIOR BACKEND ENGINEER

Overview

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to own the core data infrastructure powering an AI-driven logistics platform. This is a high-ownership zero-to-one role where youll design and scale the systems that ingest process and serve real-time logistics data across AI pipelines queues databases and search layers. Youll set technical direction for the backend operate with significant autonomy and have an outsized impact on product reliability and performance from day one.

The company is well-funded by leading venture capital firms with a deeply technical founding team from Google LinkedIn and Salesforce. Theyve moved well past zero to one with strong month-over-month revenue growth and customers processing meaningful operational volume every day.

What Youll Do

Architect and scale distributed backend systems design queue pipelines communication hubs and observability layers and build for failure with retry strategies circuit breakers and graceful degradation

Own database design and reliability schema design indexing query optimization and data pipelines that keep systems in sync at scale

Build an AI search infrastructure for real-time logistics lookup and AI-driven features

Define service boundaries and set engineering standards for the backend

Collaborate directly with founders on roadmap and technical direction

Help hire and mentor future backend engineers as the team scales

Requirements Must Have

5 years of professional backend software engineering experience

Meaningful time in a high-growth startup or high-scale production environment

Demonstrated ability to own and ship backend systems end-to-end in fast-moving ambiguous environments

Track record of making sound architectural trade-offs under time pressure and revisiting decisions as requirements evolve

Strong opinions about backend systems held loosely defended with clarity

Real startup experience (10 person company) not just big tech

Self-starter who prefers being handed a problem over a set of tickets and owning the outcome not just the code

Based in SF or committed to relocating (in-person non-negotiable)

H-1B transfer OK OPT OK No new sponsorship

Requirements Nice to Have

Experience with distributed systems message queues (Kafka RabbitMQ SQS) and event-driven architectures

Familiarity with AI/ML pipeline infrastructure or document processing at scale

Exposure to enterprise software requirements security data retention privacy compliance

Experience with search infrastructure (Elasticsearch pgvector)

Background at a high-growth Series A/B startup or as a founding engineer

Logistics customs or regulated industry software experience

Top 50 university background (soft preference strong track record always

wins)

Success Metrics

System Reliability: Core services and queue-driven workflows maintain high uptime and low error rates under production load

Throughput & Latency: Message processing pipelines and search queries meet defined SLAs as data volumes grow

Architectural Quality: Backend systems are extensible well-documented and enable other engineers to build confidently

Velocity: Scope build and ship new backend capabilities within sprint cycles without sacrificing correctness or resilience

Autonomy: Resolve complex technical blockers independently and surface the right issues at the right time

Interview Process

1. Application Review

2. Initial call (30 min)

3. Initial screen (30 min coding)

4. Technical round (45 min coding)

5. Project round (90 min)

6. Culture round

7. Offer