Software Engineer - Platform / Applied AI (Full-Stack)

Location: San Francisco, CA | Full-time | In personCompensation: $260,000-$290,000 + equityTHE ROLEOur client is looking for a Software Engineer to join their team to own core platform and data infrastructure alongside the founding team. The work spans full-stack product surfaces, desktop data-capture workflows, high-throughput pipelines, and foundational architecture. The engineer will have direct founder access and substantial responsibility for decisions that shape the growing engineering team. WHAT YOU WILL OWN Build and scale data-capture workflows across Next.js web applications and Python desktop systems Improve reliability, throughput, and performance under heavy production loads Architect data pipelines and make greenfield decisions about storage, caching, search, and message queues Establish engineering practices and scalable system patterns Work directly with the founders on product strategy and ship features quickly Take ideas from design through production and balance delivery speed with reliabilityRequirementsREQUIRED TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE Full-stack JavaScript/Next.js and Python application development Strong coding fundamentals in Node.js/TypeScript, Python, and/or Go Serverless architecture and cloud functions for substantial data processing on AWS or GCP Distributed systems, scalability, system design, and clear reasoning about technical trade-offs Hands-on experience with Redis caching, Elasticsearch indexing, and Kafka, RabbitMQ, or comparable message queues Familiarity with Kubernetes, APIs, and NoSQL databases Evidence of personally getting ideas into productionNICE TO HAVE AI research, LLM evaluation, or human-in-the-loop systems AI agents or reinforcement-learning environments Founder or early engineering experienceSTRONG CANDIDATE SIGNALS An active GitHub showing sustained building Ownership of production systems with measurable reliability or throughput results Experience with both user-facing software and demanding data infrastructure Proactive decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving startup work Clear motivation to work in AI operations and at an early-stage company Willingness to work the intense hours described in the hiring briefBenefitsCompensation$260,000-$290,000 + equityBenefitsEquity grant vesting over four years, health insurance, covered daily lunch and dinner, and a gym membership.