About the RoleWe're hiring a Distributed Systems / Backend Engineer to serve as a key contributor on the core backend platform powering Emerald AI. This is a high-impact role: you will drive architectural decisions, introduce best practices, build foundational infrastructure, and help guide the evolution of our real-time energy intelligence engine.
You'll work across ingestion, compute, storage, and system orchestration-designing components that must be highly reliable, resilient, and capable of operating at scale. As one of the early engineering hires, you'll have a major influence on our stack, roadmap, and long-term technical direction.
We hire across levels, from early-career to staff+, with expectations and scope aligned to your ability to drive outcomes.
Key Responsibilities- Designing and scaling systems that interact with real-world energy infrastructure
- Building high-performance services and APIs that power core product workflows
- Tackling hard problems in reliability, data modeling, and system design
- Shipping end-to-end features-from idea to production
- Improving system observability, performance, and fault tolerance
- Partnering closely with product to turn ambiguous problems into shipped solutions
For senior candidates, you'll have immediate opportunities to:
- Drive architecture and technical direction
- Lead ambiguous, high-impact initiatives
- Mentor and elevate other engineers
Who Thrives Here- Engineers who want to build, not just maintain
- People who take ownership without waiting for permission
- Those who enjoy figuring things out when the path isn't obvious
- Engineers who care about both technical excellence and real-world impact
- People who prefer high trust, high accountability environments
Preferred requirements- Experience with distributed systems or data-intensive applications
- Experience building and operating backend or infrastructure systems with a focus on reliability, performance, and scalability
- Interest in grid systems, energy orchestration, and applying AI to real-world infrastructure
- Experience working on real-time or near real-time systems
- Comfort operating in ambiguous environments and turning open-ended problems into production systems
- Strong system design skills, including tradeoffs across latency, consistency, and scalability
- Ability to work across the stack when needed to unblock progress
What We Offer- Make an impact. Solve the AI power bottleneck and shape how data centers scale sustainably.
- Join a world-class team of AI, cloud, software, and energy experts in a collaborative, low-ego environment.
- Build from 01. Influence strategy, GTM, org design, and customer/investor engagement from day one.
- Competitive pay + equity. Stock options let you share in the value you help create.
- Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) matching.
- Flexible location. Work from D.C., Boston, or the Bay Area, with 1 WFH day/week.
- Backed by top investors, including Radical Ventures and NVIDIA.
