Senior​/Staff Backend Engineer

Senior/Staff Backend Engineer (Platform & AI Systems)

Location:

San Francisco, CA / New York, NY (Hybrid – 3–4 days/week onsite) Company Stage of Funding:
Early Growth Stage (~$2M raised, ~$10M ARR, high-growth trajectory) Office Type:
Hybrid (SF or NYC) Salary: $200,000 – $250,000 + Equity (0.25% – 1%) Visa:
Visa sponsorship available (H1B transfers, TN; O-1 considered case-by-case)

Our client is a fast-growing AI-enabled platform modernizing one of the most operationally complex and high-stakes workflows in global talent mobility: immigration and visa processing for high-skilled workers.

The company builds infrastructure that powers end-to-end immigration workflows for ambitious companies hiring global talent. Their platform is deeply embedded into customer operations and replaces fragmented legal, operational, and data-heavy workflows with a unified, AI-assisted system.

With strong early traction (~$10M ARR on ~$2M raised), the company is scaling rapidly and expanding its engineering team to support increasing product complexity, enterprise integrations, and AI-driven automation across legal workflows.

Backed by strong founder-market fit and deep domain expertise, the company operates at the intersection of legal infrastructure, AI agents, and enterprise workflow automation.

This is a high-ownership engineering environment where systems correctness, reliability, and speed directly impact real-world legal outcomes.

• Own the design and evolution of core backend systems powering immigration workflow automation
• Build and scale Python-based backend services, APIs, and platform infrastructure
• Architect and implement agentic workflows that automate multi-step legal processes
• Redesign and scale GraphQL APIs used by customers and internal teams
• Improve backend system reliability, security, and data integrity
• Design robust data models for complex legal and operational workflows
• Build integrations with external systems (Slack, Linear, Hub Spot, Front, etc.)
• Contribute to migration efforts (including infrastructure modernization to AWS)
• Develop LLM-powered features for document generation and workflow automation
• Improve system performance, scalability, and maintainability under rapid growth
• Work directly with non-technical stakeholders (legal ops, customers, founders)
• Own technical decisions end-to-end in a high-agency, low-process environment
• Help define engineering culture and platform architecture as an early senior hire

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience (Senior to Staff level readiness)
• Strong production experience with Python in scalable systems
• Proven experience owning backend systems end-to-end in startups or fast-growth environments
• Strong system design fundamentals (APIs, distributed systems, data modeling)
• Experience working in Series A–C startups or high-ownership engineering teams
• Comfortable operating without heavy PM structure or detailed specs
• Strong product sense and ability to work directly with users/customers
• Experience in high-complexity, workflow-heavy domains (bonus: legal, fintech, infra, or ops platforms)

• Experience building or scaling GraphQL APIs in production
• Exposure to LLM applications, agentic workflows, or AI automation systems
• Experience with event-driven architectures or workflow orchestration systems
• Familiarity with PostgreSQL, serverless infrastructure, and cloud platforms (AWS preferred)
• Experience integrating third-party APIs in production systems
• Background in infrastructure-heavy startups or automation platforms
• Experience at companies like Stripe, Brex, Ramp, Palantir, Linear, or similar
• Experience in workflow automation / agent platforms (e.g., Inngest, n8n, Trigger.dev, Windmill ecosystem)
• Strong Git Hub or evidence of shipped systems

• Built and owned backend systems used in production at scale
• Experience designing data models for complex workflows or multi-entity systems
• History of making architectural decisions under ambiguity
• Proven ability to operate in fast-moving, high-ownership environments
• Hands-on experience shipping AI-enabled or automation-heavy products
• Strong communication with…