Senior/Staff Backend Engineer

Our client, an AI-driven startup focused in the digital media industry, are hiring a Senior/Staff Backend Engineer to join their team in Brooklyn, New York. The successful candidate will lead the organization’s backend systems, driving technical direction, owning core infrastructure and shaping the growth of their backend team to support fast-growth expansion.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement a generation orchestration layer capable of supporting rapid user growth and high-demand workloads.

• Enhance observability across backend systems to proactively identify and resolve issues before they impact users.

• Optimize the database layer, including schema design, indexing strategies, migrations and overall performance at scale.

• Drive vendor and architectural decisions to enable new features and improve system reliability.

• Partner with the CTO, Product Engineer and Intelligence Engineering teams to deliver a stable, high-performance foundation for all clients.

Skillset

• At least 7 years of experience building resilient backend systems that operate at significant scale.

• Minimum of 5 years of TypeScript expertise with strong convictions on type safety, error handling and code structure.

• Demonstrated ability to design, deploy and maintain highly reliable systems.

• Hands-on experience with queue-based architectures, including job scheduling, orchestration and fault-tolerant workflows.

• Strong intuition for observability e.g. instrumentation, monitoring and proactively improving system reliability.

• Proven technical leadership e.g. defining architecture, making critical decisions and mentoring engineering teams.

• Experience with Convex or other real-time database architectures is a plus.

• Familiarity with creative tools, media pipelines or workflows involving complex asset management.

• Expertise in large-scale queueing and orchestration systems.

• Knowledge of serverless patterns and platforms, including Vercel, AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Run is an advantage.

Benefits

• Salary: $180k – $220k DOE.

• Equity.

• Comprehensive health and dental coverage.