SWE Backend; Workflow Runner

About Profound

Profound is an NYC-based AI startup helping brands measure and improve their visibility in AI platforms such as ChatGPT. We partner with some of the biggest brands and marketing agencies, including companies like Mongo

DB, Indeed, Mercury, Docu Sign, Zapier, Ramp, Rho, Golin, Workable, Mejuri, Eight Sleep, G2, US Bank, Chime, and Clay.

We recently raised a $35 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital, with continued backing from venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, and South Park Commons, as well as angel investors including Guillermo Rauch (Vercel) and Andrew Karam (Applovin).

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• Build core workflow engine primitives used to orchestrate agents, tools, and dataflows.
• Own the real-time control plane: streaming events, reliable job orchestration, idempotency, and replay.
• Ship high-leverage systems that turn prototypes into production-grade, scalable workflows.

• Design and ship Rust-first backend services and clean APIs for creating, executing, and supervising graph/DAG workflows.
• Build reliable job orchestration with multiple response modes (blocking, streaming, fire-and-forget) and durable state.
• Strengthen tenant isolation, security, and access patterns across the platform.
• Improve runtime behavior: scheduling, back pressure, timeouts, retries, and idempotency.
• Evolve schemas and repositories; own migrations, indexing, and query performance.
• Instrument with meaningful telemetry; raise the bar on testing and operational excellence.
• Partner closely with product, frontend, and data teams to deliver high-impact features.

• Strong portfolio or Git Hub showing backend/system design depth.
• Proficient in a modern systems language (Rust ideal); comfortable owning services end-to-end in production.
• Solid with SQL and relational data modeling; hands-on with Postgre
  
  SQL.
• Experience with distributed systems patterns: messaging/streaming (Kafka or NATS), retries, idempotency, back pressure.
• Familiar with caching/state systems (e.g., Redis) and real-time delivery (SSE/Web Sockets).
• Strong grasp of API authn/authz, multi-tenancy, and security best practices.
• Pragmatic, collaborative, and product-minded; thrive in a fast, in-person environment.

• Built or operated workflow engines, schedulers, or agent runtimes.
• Experience with Postgres RLS and data governance at scale.
• Practical exposure to containerization (Docker), CI/CD, and cloud environments.
• Background integrating external AI/model providers and securing provider configs.

• Rust 2024, Postgre
  
  SQL, Redis
• Kafka / NATS (streaming/messaging)
• Containers and modern CI/CD
• Real-time streaming to clients

• Builders who thrive on speed, iteration, and impact—working hands-on with an in-office NYC team.

Base salary: $140,000 – $230,000. Total compensation includes salary, equity, and comprehensive benefits. Final compensation depends on skills, experience, and location, and will be determined during the interview process. Our recruiting team will share full compensation and benefits details as you move through hiring.

We’re happy to support visa sponsorship for qualified international candidates.