Backend Engineer - AI

A1 is a self-funded AI group, operating in full stealth. We're building a new global consumer AI application where backend systems are not glue - they are the control plane that connects models, data, users, and product experiences.

This is a founding backend role. You will design and build the systems that orchestrate models, manage prompts and evaluation, and power every AI interaction users experience - under real-world constraints like latency, cost, failures, and scale.

• You power every AI interaction users experience

• You shape how models are orchestrated, evaluated, and improved

• You directly affect cost, latency, and reliability

• You build real production AI infrastructure

• Design and implement backend services for AI-powered apps

• Integrate LLMs, vision, speech, and other models

• Build orchestration pipelines (agents, tools, workflows)

• Implement prompt management and versioning

• Build evaluation, logging, and feedback systems

• Design scalable APIs for mobile and web clients

• Handle retries, caching, rate limits, and fallbacks

• Ensure security, privacy, and cost control

• 4+ years backend engineering experience

• Hands-on AI model integration experience

• Strong proficiency in Python, Node.js, or Go

• Experience designing REST/gRPC APIs

• Understanding of AI latency and cost tradeoffs

• Built AI systems used in production

• Experience with RAG, vector DBs, or agent frameworks

• Designed evaluation or monitoring systems

We operate as a dense, senior, high-performance team. We value clarity, speed, craftsmanship, and relentless ownership. We behave like founders - we build, ship, iterate, and hold ourselves to a high technical bar.

If you value excellence, enjoy building real systems, and want to be part of a small team creating something globally impactful, you'll thrive here.

A1 is a self-funded, independent AI group, focused on building a new consumer AI product with global impact. We're assembling a small, elite team of ML and engineering builders who want to work on meaningful, high-impact problems.