$195,000 - $265,000Full-time / Onsite (5 days/week)
About The RolePallet is building AI infrastructure for logistics: systems that coordinate real warehouses, freight networks, and supply chains. We're looking for a founding engineer to build the security and platform foundations of the company from the ground up.
This is a hands-on software engineering role. You will write production code, design infrastructure, and establish the systems that make Pallet secure, reliable, and scalable. The decisions you make today will become the defaults the company operates on for years.
Security at Pallet is not a separate function or compliance layer. It is a design constraint embedded directly into the systems we build. We want someone who naturally asks:
- What happens when this fails?
- Who should have access to this?
- How do we reduce the blast radius?
- Can we eliminate this problem entirely?
- And then builds the answer.
You'll work alongside engineers who trained production AI systems at Scale AI, built logistics infrastructure that powers millions of deliveries at DoorDash, and scaled financial tooling used by thousands of businesses at Rippling. Small team. High ownership. Large surface area.
What You'll Do- Build and maintain the core platform services that power Pallet's AI systems and developer workflows
- Design and implement authentication, authorization, secrets management, and access control systems
- Build infrastructure that operates reliably across regions and environments with clear isolation boundaries and disaster recovery capabilities
- Improve observability, monitoring, and operational tooling so engineers can confidently understand and debug production systems
- Develop internal platforms and abstractions that allow product engineers to move quickly without compromising security or reliability
- Partner with AI and product engineering teams to support model training, evaluation, and inference infrastructure
- Identify systemic risks and eliminate entire categories of operational, security, and reliability problems
- Own projects from architecture through production rollout
Who You Are- 6+ years of software, backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering experience
- Strong software engineering fundamentals and a track record of shipping production systems
- Experience building security-sensitive systems, including authentication, authorization, secrets management, or infrastructure security
- Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, containers, networking, and distributed systems
- Experience designing platforms, tooling, or abstractions that other engineers depend on
- Comfortable moving from a blank document to a production deployment with minimal oversight
- High ownership and strong engineering judgment
- You write code every day and want to continue doing so
Nice To Haves- Experience at an early-stage startup where you helped define foundational technical decisions
- Experience building multi-region or highly available systems
- Experience supporting AI/ML infrastructure or model-serving platforms
Our tech stack- Database: PostgreSQL
- Backend: Node.js + TypeScript, Encore for server-side development and managed DevOps, hosted on GCP
- LLMs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (foundation models), Browserbase (browser automation)
- Frontend: React + TypeScript, hosted on Vercel
Interview Process- Intro Chat with Head of Talent (30 mins)
- Technical Screen + Meet and Greet with an Engineer (60 mins)
- Executive Chat - Nilkanth, CTO (30-45 mins)
- Final Interview, visit our Fidi office, and deep dive into technical and behavioral interviews (~3.5 hours)
CompensationThe estimated salary range for this role is $195,000 - $265,000, depending on experience and skill set. In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity, benefits, and opportunities for growth. Final compensation will be determined based on a combination of factors, including experience, qualifications, and location.
Our Benefits We invest in our people the same way we invest in our product: seriously.
- Health, Vision, and Dental benefits
- Flexible PTO
- + Life Insurance and Accidental Insurance
- ♥ Short-Term Disability Coverage
- Generous salary and equity for all staff
- 401k option; helping you save for the future
- Yearly learning and development stipend
- Commuter benefits for Bay Area employees
- Uber ride stipend if you ever have to work late in the office
- Remote office home stipend to get you comfy in your space
- Daily catered lunches provided
- Onboarding trip to San Francisco HQ if you work remotely
- Monthly happy hours
- Annual Company Offsites; our last one was in Palm Springs CA
Workplace PolicyWe are an in-person company. Our offices in San Francisco and New York City are where ideas get built, decisions get made, and the team gets stronger. We have invested in making them genuinely great places to spend your day, with catered lunches, monthly happy hours, and people who care about the work and each other.
Most of our team works in office five days a week. For select roles, we hire remotely across the U.S. Remote employees come to San Francisco for their first week to onboard and meet the team, and we cover the full trip. Most remote employees visit once a year after that, with all travel, lodging, and meals on us.
Every role is different. Travel expectations are always shared upfront in the job description and confirmed in your first call with us. No surprises.
