Lead Backend Engineer

Join a leading legal technology company as a Lead Backend Engineer
, driving the development of high-impact AI-enabled enterprise solutions for the legal industry. This is a player-coach role, blending hands-on technical work with team leadership as you guide a group of ~5 engineers in building and integrating backend systems for next-generation legal products.

• Serve as technical lead for a backend engineering team, both architecting and implementing solutions in a fast-paced innovation lab setting.
• Deliver hands-on backend development using Python
  , FastAPI
  , AWS
  , PostgreSQL
  , pgvector (or comparable vector dbs), and LLMs (Anthropic, OpenAI).
• Lead the full lifecycle of AI platform development, orchestration, and deployment
  , with 0→1 product creation responsibilities.
• Design and iterate on secure, scalable APIs supporting real-time interactions, integrations, and enterprise workflows.
• Drive best practices in backend development, including high performance, extensibility, and robust data management for legal domain use cases.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical leadership:
  Coach, mentor, and review work for a team of backend engineers; set standards for architectural decisions and development velocity.
• Full-stack backend engineering:
  Write, test, and deploy code, architectural diagrams, and technical documentation supporting integration and product delivery.
• AI product innovation:
  Lead the technical design for new-to-market, AI-powered legal tech products (0→1 development), including data pipelines, orchestration, and API interactions.
• Enterprise integration:
  Develop backend services and APIs for seamless integration with legal market tools, third-party applications, and client-facing solutions.
• Platform reliability:
  Own operational excellence in platform performance, security, and scalability.

Requirements

• Minimum 5 years commercial experience (outside of education) in backend engineering or related fields in high-scale environments.
• Demonstrated experience as a technical lead
  , team lead, or engineering manager, with direct responsibility for engineering deliverables and mentorship.
• Proven 0→1 AI product development experience, from concept/prototyping to deployment (ideally in legal, enterprise, or SaaS).
• Advanced proficiency in Python
  , FastAPI
  , and AWS infrastructure and services.
• Strong hands-on experience with PostgreSQL
  , pgvector (or similar vector databases), and designing data models for AI/ML applications.
• Experience building, integrating, and deploying LLM-driven features using platforms such as Anthropic or OpenAI
  .
• Deep understanding of API design for real-time interactions, backend orchestration, and multi-system integration.
• Hybrid schedule
  : 2 days/week onsite in Plano, TX, Twin Cities, MN, or NYC (remaining days remote).
• Full benefits package
  : health, dental, vision, vacation leave, parental leave.
• Equity up to 15% of total base compensation
• Annual bonus