Software Engineer

About the role

You will architect and ship the core products that enable creators to use generative AI directly within their workflows, owning the full journey from initial concept through to production deployment and measurable user impact. This role demands that you design and implement the backend systems and infrastructure required to serve millions of requests efficiently while simultaneously crafting frontend experiences that feel intuitive and delightful to use. You will act as a crucial bridge between ambitious product vision and technical feasibility, making pragmatic decisions that accelerate our ability to ship high quality features. A key part of your responsibility will be to leverage AI native engineering practices and tools to debug, understand, and rapidly iterate on complex systems. Ultimately, you will take end to end ownership of outcomes, ensuring that the features you build not only function correctly but also drive genuine delight and adoption among our creative community.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect and maintain the backend services that power Ideogram's generative AI features, ensuring high availability and performance at scale.
• Build and optimize the API layer using OpenAPI and gRPC to facilitate seamless communication between frontend clients and complex AI models.
• Implement and refine the data models and caching strategies using Redis and Memcached to reduce latency and improve user experience.
• Deploy and operate services within Kubernetes clusters on Google Cloud, utilizing Google Bigtable, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub for data management.
• Write clean, maintainable frontend code using React to create responsive interfaces that integrate smoothly with AI capabilities.
• Utilize infrastructure as code tools like Terraform and deployment pipelines involving Docker to automate reliable releases.
• Integrate third party cloud services such as Cloudflare to optimize security, networking, and content delivery for global users.
• Apply AI native engineering techniques, including the use of tools like Claude Code and Codex, to accelerate development, debugging, and understanding of the codebase.
• Collaborate closely with product managers to translate ambiguous requirements into concrete technical specifications and execution plans.
• Take responsibility for the entire product lifecycle, monitoring performance metrics and iterating based on user feedback to ensure strong adoption.
• Champion code quality through rigorous code reviews and by fostering a culture of learning and constructive collaboration across the team.
• Explore and prototype integrations with ML model fine-tuning workflows and inference pipelines to support future product innovations.
• Contribute to the development of internal developer tools and design systems that improve engineering velocity and consistency.
• Participate in experimentation frameworks and feature flagging to safely test new ideas and measure their impact before wide release.
• Help maintain and evolve the real time systems that support high throughput demands during peak usage periods.

Requirements

• You hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or you possess equivalent practical experience.
• You demonstrate a deep curiosity about generative AI and a genuine excitement for its potential to empower creators in meaningful ways.
• You are comfortable navigating highly ambiguous problems and can independently define technical direction to turn ideas into reality.
• You have a strong track record of building and shipping software that delivers real user impact and tangible value.
• You operate with urgency, shipping incremental value quickly and iterating based on honest user feedback.
• You are able to design clean APIs and data models that support evolving product needs without introducing unnecessary complexity.
• You prefer keeping systems simple and know when to add structure versus maintaining a lightweight approach.
• You are a self starter who takes initiative to identify opportunities and drives them through to completion with minimal direction.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating ML models into production applications, including inference, prompt engineering, and fine tuning workflows.
• A track record of shipping consumer facing AI products or features that have reached a wide audience.
• Contributions to open source projects related to design systems, component libraries, or developer tooling.
• Familiarity with experimentation frameworks and feature flagging to enable safe and controlled rollouts.
• Experience building real time systems or high throughput applications that must handle demanding workloads.

Practical notes

4 weeks of vacation

Work at Ideogram

Ideogram is a team of exceptionally talented, curious builders who love solving tough problems and turning bold ideas into reality. We move fast, collaborate deeply, and operate without unnecessary hierarchy, because we believe the best ideas can come from anyone. Everyone at Ideogram rolls up their sleeves to make our products and our customers successful. We thrive on curiosity, creativity, and shared ownership. We believe that small, dedicated teams working together with trust and purpose can move faster, think bigger, and create amazing things.

Ideogram is committed to welcoming everyone - regardless of gender identity, orientation, or expression. Our mission is to create belonging and remove barriers so everyone can create boldly.

What we offer

💸Competitive compensation and equity designed to recognize the value and impact of your contributions to Ideogram's success.

🌴 4 weeks of vacation to recharge and return refreshed