Senior Software Engineer, Back End & Infrastructure

About the role

You will architect, build, and maintain scalable backend services using Python and Go to power our AI Discovery platform. You will design resilient APIs and optimize data pipelines to ensure high performance and reliability for our infrastructure. You will own and evolve critical cloud infrastructure patterns, including environment configuration and access controls. You will implement and manage infrastructure as code using tools like Terraform to define our environments. You will design and maintain containerized services with Docker and modern deployment workflows. You will integrate and test data from third-party APIs, including large language model providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. You will manage performance, cost, and observability across AI integrations and backend systems. You will debug and troubleshoot issues spanning both application and infrastructure layers to resolve complex problems.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect, build, and maintain scalable backend services in Python and Go for core platform functionality.
• Design resilient APIs, optimize data pipelines, and improve system performance and reliability under load.
• Own and evolve parts of our cloud infrastructure, including environment configuration, networking, and access patterns.
• Implement and manage infrastructure as code using Terraform or equivalent tools to ensure reproducible environments.
• Design, build, and maintain containerized services using Docker and modern deployment workflows for consistency.
• Integrate and test data from third-party APIs, including LLM providers like OpenAI and Anthropic, reliably and securely.
• Manage performance, cost, and observability across AI integrations and backend systems to meet business goals.
• Debug and troubleshoot issues across application and infrastructure layers to identify root causes quickly.
• Simplify and scale complex systems to support product growth, increasing data volume, and evolving requirements.
• Influence long-term technical direction and backend architecture through design discussions and prototypes.
• Mentor junior engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and coaching to elevate team standards.
• Collaborate across the stack with product, design, and operations to ship features quickly and reliably for customers.

Requirements

• 7+ years building and owning resilient, high-performance backend systems for user-facing or B2B products in production environments.
• Strong software engineering discipline with the ability to design testable systems, write meaningful automated tests, and protect against regressions as systems evolve.
• Deep proficiency in Python (or similar languages) and a track record of designing distributed systems that scale and handle failure.
• Operated production workloads in cloud environments such as GCP, AWS, Azure, or similar, including IAM, service accounts, access controls, and environment isolation.
• Improved the performance and reliability of ambiguous or legacy systems by simplifying architecture and reducing operational risk through clear abstractions.
• Built and maintained infrastructure as code using Terraform or equivalent tools to manage cloud resources and configurations.
• Designed, deployed, and maintained containerized services using Docker and modern CI/CD workflows to enable rapid iterations.
• Designed scalable data models and worked deeply with databases such as MongoDB or similar NoSQL and SQL stores.
• Integrated and operated third-party APIs at scale with attention to performance, cost, security, and failure handling strategies.
• Worked with observability tools and practices, including logging, metrics, and tracing, to maintain system health and debug issues.
• Demonstrated experience collaborating with cross-functional teams in an agile environment to deliver high-quality software on schedule.
• Committed to writing clean, maintainable code and documenting systems to ensure long-term operability and team alignment.

Nice to have

• Experience with large language model integrations and prompt engineering patterns for AI applications.
• Familiarity with marketing technology, SEO data, or brand analytics platforms.
• Contributions to open source projects or public-facing technical artifacts demonstrating engineering excellence.
• Experience with ad tech, real-time bidding systems, or high-throughput data platforms.
• Background in AI discovery, recommendation systems, or semantic search technologies.

Practical notes

• Work is restricted to candidates authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future visa sponsorship, including U.S. citizens and Green Card holders.
• The role is full-time with standard employment expectations for collaboration and availability within agreed hours.
• Positions are based in either New York City or Seattle, with flexibility aligned with team needs and operational requirements.
• Compensation details are not specified in this job description and will be discussed during the hiring process based on role and location.