Backend Engineer, Foundations
Recruiting From Scratch · New York, NY
$180,000–$250,000from the description
Jul 27, 2026
New York, NY
Jul 29, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A seed-stage Legal AI startup is hiring a backend engineer to own core infrastructure: knowledge graph architecture, distributed data pipelines, production APIs, and backend services that power an AI-native legal analysis platform. The role involves building with Python, Neo4j, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kubernetes, and workflow orchestration tools, working closely with AI researchers and founders at a 10-person company in New York (fully on-site).
Mid level · 3+ years · New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
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 450 people in the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 330–580
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 $170,499 (middle half $133,523–$210,499). 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 29, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The role title carries no seniority level, and the minimum experience gate is only 3+ years — consistent with a mid-level engineer despite the broad ownership language typical of seed-stage startups.
The bachelor's degree is listed as 'preferred' and the posting explicitly notes that exceptional candidates without it will be considered, so no hard degree requirement is set.
Prefect is named explicitly in both the responsibilities and requirements sections; Airflow, Dagster, and Temporal appear as named alternatives ('or similar tools') in the technical requirements block.
Neo4j is listed under 'preferred' in the technical requirements ('graph databases such as Neo4j preferred'), so it is marked as preferred despite appearing prominently in the responsibilities narrative.
Go, Rust, Zig, and Kafka are grouped together under a single 'preferred' line in the technical requirements. Go is used as the primary skill name with Rust and Zig as alternatives; Kafka is captured separately as preferred.
This posting is sourced through a recruiting/staffing firm (Recruiting from Scratch); the actual hiring company is unnamed.
Read the full posting
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