Backend Engineer (Infra)

Location - Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY (On-site) - On-site role requiring five days per week in-office in Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York.

Compensation - $150,000 – $220,000 Base + Competitive Equity

Visa - No Visa Sponsorship

Company Stage - Early Stage – Seed

Industry - Artificial Intelligence, Talent Technology, AI Infrastructure, Enterprise SaaS, Agentic AI, Developer Infrastructure

About the Company

Our client is building an AI-native platform designed to transform how talent and companies connect through intelligent agent ecosystems.

The company is developing technology where AI agents represent both individuals and companies, creating richer context around people, teams, skills, and business needs than traditional resumes and job descriptions can provide.

The company is operating with a very small, highly technical founding team and is backed by early-stage investors.

As one of the first engineering hires, you'll have significant ownership over the infrastructure powering the platform, including multi-tenant deployments, data isolation, cloud architecture, and production reliability.

This is an opportunity to work across backend engineering, infrastructure, cloud systems, enterprise deployments, and AI-powered product infrastructure while helping define the technical foundation of the company from the ground up.

What You'll Do

• Optimize and harden the existing AWS-based product infrastructure to support rapid customer and platform scaling
• Build and maintain multi-tenant deployment architecture across enterprise customers
• Design systems for secure permissioning, data isolation, and reliable customer deployments
• Own the infrastructure-as-code layer across Terraform, Kubernetes, and Docker
• Make architectural decisions around services, deployment patterns, and infrastructure systems that enable easier scaling
• Build reliable backend infrastructure supporting the company's AI-native product
• Develop and maintain production backend services and APIs
• Build new product features and infrastructure capabilities based on signals from design partners
• Translate customer deployment requirements into scalable platform capabilities
• Encode learnings from bespoke customer deployments back into the core product
• Improve deployment reliability, observability, scalability, and operational performance
• Design systems that support multiple enterprise customers while maintaining strong isolation and security
• Establish repeatable deployment and infrastructure practices as the customer base grows
• Work across backend, infrastructure, cloud, and product engineering priorities
• Collaborate closely with founders and technical leadership on architecture and technical strategy
• Make infrastructure and backend decisions with long-term scalability in mind
• Debug and resolve complex production infrastructure and backend issues
• Improve engineering workflows, development practices, and deployment processes
• Build systems that can evolve rapidly as product requirements and customer needs change
• Operate with high autonomy in a fast-moving early-stage environment
• Balance engineering velocity, infrastructure reliability, security, and customer requirements
• Continuously improve the scalability, performance, and resilience of the platform

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience Requirements

• 3–6+ years of professional experience in backend or infrastructure engineering
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals
• Experience building and operating production infrastructure
• Experience working with cloud-based production systems
• Experience designing and maintaining scalable deployment architectures
• Experience with multi-tenant systems or enterprise deployments preferred
• Experience working at startups or high-growth technology companies preferred
• Experience owning technical infrastructure projects end-to-end
• Experience working directly on customer-driven product or infrastructure requirements
• Experience operating systems in production environments
• Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated execution ability
• Comfortable working across backend and infrastructure responsibilities
• Comfortable making technical decisions in ambiguous environments
• Strong understanding of production reliability and operational excellence
• Comfortable working closely with founders and senior technical leadership
• Ability to operate effectively as an early engineering hire

Technical Requirements

• Strong backend engineering experience
• Strong infrastructure engineering fundamentals
• Strong Python experience
• Strong TypeScript experience preferred
• Strong AWS experience
• Strong Terraform experience
• Strong Kubernetes experience
• Strong Docker experience
• Experience designing and operating cloud infrastructure
• Experience building production backend services and APIs
• Experience designing multi-tenant architectures
• Experience with permissioning and data isolation systems
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code practices
• Experience with deployment automation and production operations
• Experience troubleshooting distributed production systems
• Experience with observability, reliability, and performance optimization
• Experience working with AI or LLM-powered applications preferred
• Experience with LangChain or comparable AI application frameworks preferred
• Strong understanding of system architecture and distributed systems
• Ability to reason about scalability, reliability, security, and performance
• Ability to work across backend, infrastructure, cloud, and product systems
• Ability to learn unfamiliar technologies and infrastructure patterns quickly

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred
• Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
• Strong computer science, systems, and software engineering fundamentals

Soft Skills

• Exceptional technical ownership
• Strong infrastructure and architectural judgment
• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
• Strong systems thinking
• Strong backend engineering mindset
• Comfortable working with significant ambiguity
• Strong communication skills
• Comfortable working directly with founders
• Comfortable working directly with customer-facing teams
• High execution velocity
• Strong bias toward shipping
• Strong ability to make pragmatic technical tradeoffs
• Comfortable making infrastructure decisions independently
• Strong production ownership
• Low-ego collaborative mentality
• Strong builder mentality
• Comfortable wearing multiple hats on a small team
• Strong customer orientation
• Strong business awareness
• Comfortable translating customer requirements into scalable infrastructure
• Comfortable establishing infrastructure practices from scratch
• Comfortable operating in a high-intensity early-stage environment
• Strong willingness to work five days per week in Dumbo, Brooklyn

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $150,000 – $220,000
• Competitive equity package
• Opportunity to join one of the earliest engineering teams
• Significant ownership over backend and infrastructure architecture
• Opportunity to build and scale enterprise-grade multi-tenant infrastructure
• Opportunity to work on AI-native product infrastructure
• Direct collaboration with founders and technical leadership
• Opportunity to shape infrastructure standards and engineering practices
• Exposure to cloud infrastructure, AI systems, and enterprise deployments
• High-impact early-stage environment with significant technical ownership
• Opportunity to directly influence infrastructure decisions as the platform scales

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join an extremely early-stage AI-native company and help build the infrastructure that will support its next stage of growth.

You'll own critical backend and infrastructure systems, working across AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, and AI-powered application infrastructure while helping establish the architecture and deployment patterns from the ground up.

You'll work directly with founders and customer-facing teams, turning real deployment challenges into scalable platform capabilities rather than building infrastructure in isolation.

If you enjoy backend engineering, cloud infrastructure, solving complex deployment problems, building scalable systems, and operating with high ownership in an early-stage environment, this role offers exceptional technical scope and impact.