Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer at Key Talent Solutions Senior Backend Engineer at Key Talent Solutions in Sonoma, California Posted in about 21 hours ago.

Type:

full-time

Job Description:

Senior Backend Engineer ???? San Francisco, CA ???? In-person | Full-Time About the Opportunity We are working with a fast-growing AI infrastructure startup focused on transforming operational workflows within global trade and logistics. The business is building AI agents that automate document-heavy operational processes traditionally handled manually by logistics and customs teams. The platform is already processing meaningful production volume and delivering measurable operational impact at scale. Backed by leading early-stage investors, the team has strong momentum, significant revenue growth, and a deeply technical founding group with backgrounds from major technology companies and AI-focused environments. The Role As a Senior Backend Engineer , you will own critical backend infrastructure powering AI-driven operational workflows and real-time logistics systems. This is a high-autonomy engineering role focused on: Distributed backend systems Queue-driven architectures Search infrastructure Reliability and observability Real-time data processing pipelines You will help shape backend architecture from an early stage while working directly with founders on technical direction and product scalability. What You'll Be Doing Architect and scale distributed backend systems and data infrastructure Build and maintain queue pipelines, communication layers, and observability tooling Design resilient systems using retry logic, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation strategies Own database reliability, schema design, indexing, and query optimisation Build AI search and retrieval infrastructure for real-time operational workflows Define backend engineering standards and service boundaries Collaborate directly with founders on roadmap and architecture decisions Help mentor and scale future backend engineering hires Requirements Must-Have 5-8+ years of software engineering experience Strong experience within high-growth startups or production-scale environments Proven ability to own backend systems end-to-end in fast-moving environments Strong architectural judgement and ability to make pragmatic trade-offs under pressure Startup mentality with strong ownership and autonomy Comfortable operating without rigid structure or highly defined tickets Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate immediately Existing US work authorisation or transferable visa status Nice-to-Have Kafka RabbitMQ SQS Event-driven systems Distributed systems architecture Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure or document-processing systems Search infrastructure experience (Elasticsearch, pgvector, vector search, etc.) Enterprise platform experience involving: security compliance privacy data retention Experience within Series A/B startups or founding engineering teams Exposure to logistics, customs, or regulated-industry software This Role May Not Suit You If You require heavy process, extensive documentation, or rigid roadmap structures You prefer narrowly scoped component ownership Early-stage ambiguity and rapid iteration are uncomfortable environments for you Why This Opportunity Stands Out High ownership from day one Direct collaboration with highly technical founders Real distributed systems and scaling challenges Product already operating at meaningful production scale Strong engineering culture focused on speed, autonomy, and execution Significant equity opportunity alongside competitive compensation