AI Backend Engineer

AI Backend Engineer

Experience: 1-3 years shipping production code (or exceptional new grads with strong portfolios)
Location: San Francisco / Bay Area (Relocation assistance available)
Job Type: Full-time

Klarity (YC S18) is building multimodal AI agents that replace how Fortune 500s understand and transform their operations.

Big companies pay consultants millions to document processes and analyze operations. It takes months and goes stale immediately. We built multimodal AI agents that do it continuously. OpenAI, Google, Door Dash, Service Now and many others are using Klarity to replace that entire process.

We shipped GPT-4 document chat within 12 hours of OpenAI's launch. We believe speed and quality happen together when you're thoughtful about how you build.

We're hiring Backend + Applied AI Engineers to build the core systems that power Klarity's multimodal agents in real enterprise environments. This is a hands‑on engineering role at the intersection of distributed systems and applied AI: you'll design and ship backend services that ingest messy real‑world data, orchestrate model/agent workflows, enforce enterprise‑grade security and deliver reliable outcomes at scale.

You'll work closely with product, design, and other engineers to turn ambitious AI capabilities into production‑grade features that Fortune 500 enterprises can depend on. We care deeply about engineering fundamentals (correctness, observability, security, performance) and equally about iteration speed – because in this space, only the teams who ship quality products & features at incredible velocity win.

You'll be paired with senior engineers who'll accelerate your growth, but you'll own real features from day one – we don't believe in extended bench time.

Note
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We do not require a CS or Engineering degree. We care about your ability to ship, your systems thinking, and evidence of strong execution – whether through production work, open‑source contributions, research, or high‑quality side projects.

• Backend engineer with sharp product judgment – You design and build services, APIs, data models, and infrastructure that are reliable, observable, secure, and fast. You're building strong instincts for architectural tradeoffs and you actively seek feedback on your design decisions. You optimize for outcomes – developer velocity, latency, correctness, uptime – and not just for elegance in the abstract.

• Systems thinker – You're developing the muscle to see around corners. While solving today's stated requirements, you anticipate how services will need to evolve – functionally and non‑functionally. You design for the future but build for the present, and you ask good questions about why things are built a certain way and push back when complexity isn't justified.

• Applied AI builder who ships to production – You're energized by LLMs, multimodal agents, orchestration protocols, and the messy work of making the entire AI stack reliable. You think instinctively in terms of evals, model regression tests, traceability, and exception handling. You've built at least one meaningful AI‑powered project – whether production, open‑source, or a serious side project – and you understand the gap between a working demo and a reliable system.

• AI‑native developer across the entire SDLC – You wield tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and Copilot as extensions of your craft. You are extremely confident to run concurrent agents doing your chores reliably. You use AI to generate technical designs, scaffold APIs, draft schemas, write tests, and build migration plans. You're hungry to master these workflows and are already noticeably faster than peers who haven't embraced AI tooling.

• Ship with velocity and craft – You find the shortest path to get features into users' hands while obsessing over the details that create trust. You can calibrate the tradeoff between speed and tech debt, and you welcome guidance on where the line is. You believe speed and quality aren't opposites – they happen together when you're thoughtful about how you build.

• Bring energy that elevates the entire team – You see gnarly distributed systems challenges as…