Senior Backend Engineer

POSITION SUMMARY We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to be the scaling expert behind our core systems. You’ll drive architectural decisions that balance “what must work today” with “what must scale tomorrow,” owning systems that are low-latency, resilient, and cost-aware. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - TS-first backend: Expert in Node/Typescript services; bonus points for production Go. - Systems & scale: Deep grasp of memory management, distributed systems, durable execution, and edge functions. - Queues & state: Hands-on with Temporal (or equivalent durable workflows) and Redis at scale. - Cloud & reliability: Comfortable shipping/operating in modern cloud environments with strong observability habits. - LLM-aware: Familiarity with LLM integrations and their operational quirks is a plus. - Product sense: You make pragmatic tradeoffs, communicate risk clearly, and choose designs that unblock the roadmap. - Opinionated: Deep level of understanding of the technological landscape, making both high level system and granular code design decisions based on understanding rather than preference - diving deep on unknown patterns in order to build the best product. RESPONSIBILITIES - Architect, build, and operate backend services that are fast, fault-tolerant, and easy to evolve. - Define service boundaries, data models, and contracts that keep teams moving independently. - Establish performance baselines and SLOs; design for durability and graceful degradation. - Lead technical design reviews and mentor engineers across code quality, testing, and ops. - Own critical systems: queue orchestration (Temporal), caching (Redis), and infra automation. NICE TO HAVE - Prior work with agentic/LLM workflows LOGISTICS - Compensation: $165K - $230K salary, $100K-200K equivalent in new hire equity (4 year vest) - Location: New York City. We are a fully in-office team working out of Midtown Manhattan Monday through Friday. We allow for WFH days when anyone is traveling, but we do not allow for permanent remote work. - Benefits: - Generous health, dental, and vision insurance - 401k with 3% automatic contribution (no vesting) - Paid Lunches - Wellness and Citi Bike benefit - Unlimited PTO