SeniorStaff Backend Engineer

Were looking for a senior or staff-level backend engineer to own and evolve the core systems that power Lighthouse.

Our backend is Python and TypeScript PostgreSQL GraphQL and serverless compute with LLMs woven throughout.

This role is focused on making our backend faster more reliable and ready to scale. The problems ahead of us:

• Designing and building agentic systems: autonomous multi-step workflows that draft legal documents review cases and orchestrate complex processes with minimal human input.

• Improving backend security: tightening auth moving toward proper environment isolation hardening our database access patterns.

• Scaling our API layer. The customer-facing GraphQL API has grown organically and needs better structure performance and maintainability.

• Building robust data pipelines and integrations across Slack Linear HubSpot Front and other external services.

• Strengthening our document ingestion and generation pipelines the systems that turn messy inputs into filing-ready legal output.

• You have 5 years building and operating production backend systems: APIs databases async job processing event-driven architectures.

• Youre strong in Python/Typescript and have experience building scalable complex backend systems. Experience with PostgreSQL async Python and event-driven architectures is a plus.

• Youve built (or want to build) agentic systems and LLM-powered features. Were automating complex legal workflows with AI and need people who want to push that forward.

• You think carefully about system design: service boundaries data modeling failure modes observability.

• You have high agency especially for independent research and problem-solving.

• Youve dealt with the messy realities of scaling systems: migrations dual-writes feature flags legacy code removal.

• Lighthouse is an engineering-led company. We get to pick/veto what we build.

• We spend a considerable chunk of time with users (the legal operations team or customers) to find and pick what to build. Some projects our team has worked on include:

  • A real-time collaborative text editor using CRDTs

  • An LLM agent framework with tools for case automation

  • A custom PDF compilation pipeline on serverless infrastructure

  • Autonomous letter-drafting agents powered by LLMs

• We ship multiple times a day with a preference for testing ideas out quickly and polishing over time.

• We sponsor visas obviously.

• Competitive base and equity scales with experience.

• Competitive medical dental and vision benefits.

• 401k with a 3% company match.

• Equipment/office stipend.

• Annual team off-site in cool places.

• In person in San Francisco or New York.

Lighthouse is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds communities and experiences. To apply email your resume and something youve built to . If selected well schedule a call to get to know you better and do a deep technical dive into the work youve chosen to highlight.

Required Experience:

Staff IC