Senior Backend Engineer

SENIOR BACKEND ENGINEERSan Francisco, CA | Full-time | In-Office\-------------------------------------------------------------COMPENSATIONBase: $180,000--$260,000Equity: 0.2--0.5%Benefits: Health insurance fully covered; dental & vision 75% covered; 401(k)\-------------------------------------------------------------WHY THIS ROLEBacked by top-tier venture investors and featuring a founding team from leading tech companies, this seed-stage logistics AI startup exited stealth in early 2026 and has already returned over 30,000 hours to customs brokerage teams — the product works and is scaling. As the senior backend engineer, you own the full data infrastructure stack from day one with meaningful equity (0.2–0.5%), direct founder mentorship, and no ticket queues between you and real architectural decisions. The company doubled ARR within two months of closing its seed round and is now building for the next stage of growth.\-------------------------------------------------------------ABOUT THE ROLEThis is a founding backend engineering role on a small, technical team building AI agents to automate customs clearance workflows in a $10T global trade industry that still relies on manual, document-heavy processes. You'll design and scale distributed systems — queues, pipelines, databases, search — that power the core logistics platform, and set technical direction for the backend as the team grows.\-------------------------------------------------------------REQUIREMENTSExperience: 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience\- Meaningful time in a high-growth startup or high-scale production environment\- Demonstrated ability to own and ship backend systems end-to-end with minimal supervision\- Track record of making sound architectural trade-offs under time pressure\- Strong command of distributed systems, database design, indexing, and query optimization \- Real startup experience (10+ person company); self-starter mentality required\- Based in San Francisco or committed to relocating (in-person, non-negotiable)Preferred:\- Experience with message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS) and event-driven architectures\- Familiarity with AI/ML pipeline infrastructure or document processing at scale\- Experience with search infrastructure (Elasticsearch, pgvector)\- Background at a Series A/B startup or as a founding engineer\- Logistics, customs, or regulated industry software experienceVisa Sponsorship: H-1B transfer OK · OPT OK · No new H-1B sponsorship\-------------------------------------------------------------LOGISTICSLocation: San Francisco, CAWork Policy: In-office, full-time (non-negotiable)\-------------------------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW PROCESSIntro call → Initial screen + coding → Coding interview → Project round → Culture & offer alignment → Offer