Lead Back End Engineer

We've partnered with a well-funded AI startup based in San Francisco building systems for a world with highly capable AI.Their vision? A future where everyone has a personal AI; one that understands your preferences, evolves with you, makes millions of decisions daily, and coordinates seamlessly with others. While power over AGI consolidates into the hands of a few, we’re creating a different path: giving billions of people access to capital, resources, and real-world agency through AI.What They're BuildingA consumer AI product centered on privacy & personalizationSecure execution environments for verifiable, private computationProtocols enabling large-scale coordination between agentsMemory architectures & self-hosted infrastructure, open-source at the coreThe Role: Backend Engineering Lead As a Backend Engineering Lead, you’ll work directly with the CEO/CTO, leading junior engineers and driving projects end-to-end. You’ll balance rapid prototyping and MVP development with scaling systems that support real-world products. This is a role for someone who thrives in fast-paced, experimental environments and is motivated as much by user outcomes as by technical challenges. Comes with a salary up to $300,000 and equity.What You’ll DoDrive backend architecture and development for new and existing systemsRapidly prototype and iterate on ideas, learning from both technical challenges and user feedbackLead junior engineers while staying hands-on in coding and system designBalance speed and scale: hack new projects quickly, then harden them for productionWhat You’ll BringDeep backend engineering expertise with distributed systems, queues, events, CI, migrations, and scalable architectureHands-on experience with frontier AI patterns (LLM streaming, KV cache, MCP servers, tool calling, running LLMs locally, etc.)Strong familiarity with the evolving AI ecosystem and a daily user of AI dev tools (e.g. Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, Devin)Proven ability to reverse-engineer APIs, experiment with voice agents, and build with cutting-edge frameworksA deep sense of urgency, mission-driven mindset, and desire to make an impact on a global scaleNice to HaveExperience with Temporal, GraphQL, Cassandra/Scylla, or vector databases/RAG projectsContributions to open source, publications, or competitive programming achievementsLocation San Francisco (hybrid/remote flexibility available)