About the role
This is a senior individual contributor seat with unusual reach. You will own technical direction for a significant area of the platform, either large-scale distributed systems or agent-centric AI products, and work hand-in-hand with VPs and C-suite engineering leaders on the highest-priority problems in the company.
What you will do
• Own the architecture and technical direction for a significant area of the platform, either large-scale distributed systems or agent-centric AI products
• Lead the hardest technical problems, making the build, buy, and cost tradeoffs that shape the entire engineering organization
• Set standards and patterns that raise the bar across multiple teams and multiply the output of the engineers around you
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to keep technical direction tied to business outcomes
• Use AI-assisted development as a first-class part of how you work, leaning on agents for design, investigation, and implementation
• Float across the highest-priority projects as the go-to individual contributor in the room
Requirements
What we are looking for
• 8 to 15 years in backend or full-stack engineering, building large-scale distributed systems
• A track record of owning and operating systems in production at serious scale, serving 100,000+ users
• Clear upward trajectory in scope rather than a plateau at senior level
• Strong system design instincts for large-scale data and distributed systems
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools such as Copilot or Cursor
Nice to have
• Experience building LLM-based or agent-centric products
• Familiarity with Ruby on Rails, Python, MongoDB, or Elasticsearch
• Infrastructure-as-code experience with Terraform
• A strong database or data engineering background that has broadened into distributed systems
Benefits
• Base salary of $217,000 to $410,000, depending on level and experience
• Competitive equity
• Hybrid schedule with three days per week in the San Francisco office
• Open to visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers
• Two hires planned for this role, at Staff and Principal level
• High-autonomy environment with direct exposure to engineering and executive leadership
