Senior Engineer - Backend & Platform
Recruiting From Scratch · San Francisco, CA
$190,000–$300,000from the description
Jun 28, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
An early-stage AI infrastructure company is looking for a senior backend and platform engineer to design and build core distributed systems, APIs, and platform services that power LLM-based agents reasoning over large-scale enterprise knowledge. The role carries broad architectural ownership — spanning backend services, data infrastructure, retrieval systems, and production operations — and involves working closely with the founding team. It suits engineers with 5+ years of backend experience, strong Python skills, and hands-on familiarity with distributed systems and AI/LLM tooling.
Senior level · 5+ years · Remote · Full-time
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 14,200 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 8,500–21,300
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $135,980 (middle half $105,210–$171,980). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The role is open to candidates in both the US and Canada; the caller has confirmed fully remote. The posting notes a strong preference for existing US or Canadian work authorization, with sponsorship considered only for exceptional candidates.
The degree requirement (Bachelor's in CS or related field) is framed as 'preferred' and no equivalent-experience clause is needed to demote it — it is not a hard gate.
LLMs, RAG systems, AI agents, and agentic workflows are listed together under Technical Requirements with firm language ('Hands-on experience with…'), making them hard gates; AI agents is also called out separately in the What You'll Do section but is captured under the combined requirement.
'AI coding tools' appears under Technical Requirements ('Experience leveraging AI coding tools effectively') but names no specific product; it is retained as a preferred skill since no canonical tool is specified and it reads more as a working-style expectation than a technology gate.
The $190,000–$300,000 range is unusually wide for a single band, likely reflecting variance across candidate seniority and equity trade-offs at this seed-stage company.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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