Staff Backend Engineer

Staff Backend Engineer

Are you a staff engineer who wants to build, not just advise? Have you ever looked at an architecture decision and thought "if we get this wrong, it'll cost us in 18 months" and then taken it on yourself to get it right? Do you want to own real systems, ship real code, and shape technical direction at the same time?

A well-funded Series A voice AI company is hiring staff backend engineers to help shape the next generation of real-time AI agents for enterprise customer experience. The work affects millions of people every day, runs in high-stakes regulated environments, and is already deployed at scale with Fortune 500 customers.

They've raised a substantial Series A from top-tier investors, they're processing over a million customer sessions a month, and they've never lost a head-to-head against the better-known names in this space. This is not pre-revenue hype.

What you'll do

▸ Drive the architecture of the agent infrastructure as it scales. Real tradeoffs between speed, reliability, and complexity, where the decisions actually matter.

▸ Own the most ambiguous, highest-stakes projects end-to-end. Design, build, ship, operate.

▸ Spot the gaps in the system before they become incidents and build the case for fixing them.

▸ Set the bar for engineering quality across the team through your own code and reviews, not through process.

▸ Mentor other engineers through collaboration on real problems, not through formal management.

The team

Around 40 people. Founding engineers from strong technical backgrounds with published research on fine-tuning open-source models. VP of Engineering was an early engineer at a major consumer tech company. Staff engineers here own entire product areas end-to-end — no layers of management between you and shipping.

The role is in-office 5 days a week in San Francisco. They want builders who want to be in the room while the hard problems get solved. They're hiring 6–8 people for this role and moving fast.

What they're looking for

✓ Prior experience operating at staff level, or clearly ready to step up

✓ Deep backend engineering chops and a track record of owning ambiguous, high-stakes systems ✓ Comfortable making architectural calls and defending them

✓ Motivated by impact and outcomes rather than headcount

✓ Startup DNA. You ship, you operate, you don't wait for the spec.

What they offer

💰 $290K–$350K base + competitive equity at a company with clear trajectory toward serious scale

• Real ownership of entire product areas, end-to-end
• Direct collaboration with the founding team on the hardest problems
• Visa sponsorship and transfers available
• The chance to shape the technical direction of a category-defining company while it's still being built