Senior Backend Engineer- AI Agent

Shanghai Express, Inc
Palo Alto, United States of America
4 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English
Experience level
Senior
Compensation
$ 300K

Job location

Palo Alto, United States of America

Tech stack

Artificial Intelligence
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems
Software as a Service
Cloud Computing
Code Review
Continuous Integration
Database Design
Database Models
Software Debugging
Distributed Systems
Python
Node.js
NoSQL
Open Source Technology
Performance Tuning
Queueing Systems
Software Engineering
SQL Databases
TypeScript
Speech Recognition
WebSocket
Large Language Models
Multi-Agent Systems
Prompt Engineering
Generative AI
Backend
FastAPI
Event Driven Architecture
Kubernetes
Low Latency
Virtual Agents
Api Design
GPT
Go
Microservices

Job description

  • Architect Distributed Systems: Build scalable backend, infrastructure, and agentic services for web, mobile, and multi-platform products.
  • Evolve the Agent Runtime: Design and optimize the core execution loop that handles agent reasoning, tool-use frameworks, function calling, memory retrieval, and multi-step orchestration.
  • Design Real-Time Architecture: Own and scale real-time messaging infrastructure, event-driven architectures, WebSocket connections, and pub/sub patterns for throughput, latency, and reliability.
  • Implement Core AI Capabilities: Optimize LLM integrations, multi-provider model routing (Claude, GPT, Gemini, open-source), context window management, cost optimization, and streaming responses.
  • Build Memory & Retrieval Systems: Design semantic search and vector-based embedding infrastructure to handle long-term memory, working memory, and episodic recall for autonomous agents.
  • Own Backend Logic End-to-End: Drive database modeling (SQL/NoSQL), API design, performance tuning, and production reliability for high-traffic pipelines.
  • Drive Technical Excellence: Write RFCs, evaluate complex technical trade-offs, mentor junior engineers through code reviews, and build alignment across engineering and product teams.

Requirements

Do you have experience in Software engineering?, * Experience: 5+ years of software engineering experience building production services at scale, with 2+ years hands-on with LLM-based orchestration, multi-agent systems, or agentic solutions.

  • Backend Mastery: Deep proficiency in modern backend technologies (Node.js, Python, Go) and frameworks (Express, FastAPI, TypeScript, etc.).
  • Systems & Infra Knowledge: Strong understanding of distributed systems, event-driven microservices, message queues, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), Kubernetes, and CI/CD workflows.
  • AI & Agentic Expertise: Solid grasp of LLM capabilities and limitations, prompt engineering (system prompts, chain-of-thought, structured output), tool-use execution, and embedding models.
  • Real-Time Patterns: Comfort designing and debugging real-time streaming pipelines, long-polling, and highly concurrent networking setups.
  • Product & Data Intuition: Deep understanding of database design and the product sense needed to make an AI system feel "alive" and responsive.
  • Mindset: Ownership mentality-identify systemic bottlenecks and ship solutions without waiting for exact specifications. Strong communication and a collaborative, team-first attitude.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with multi-modal AI architectures (image generation, TTS, speech-to-text, video generation)
  • Experience with agent frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGPT) or building custom, high-performance execution runtimes
  • Experience with fine-tuning, RLHF, or DPO pipelines
  • Background in multi-tenant SaaS or internal tooling and operational automation
  • Previous startup experience-comfortable with ambiguity and rapid experimentation
  • Competitive coding background (IOI, ICPC, Olympiad medalists, etc.), * AI Agent Development: 1 year (Required)
  • Backend Development: 5 years (Required)

Ability to Commute:

  • Palo Alto, CA 94302 (Required)

Benefits & conditions

Pulled from the full job description

  • 401(k)
  • Health insurance
  • Paid time off
  • Vision insurance
  • Dental insurance
  • Relocation assistance
  • Flexible schedule, * Competitive salary in the AI industry
  • Equity in a fast-growing startup shaping the future of AI
  • Comprehensive health benefits, monthly stipends, company retreats
  • A supportive and collaborative office culture-we're all building and launching together

Pay: $180,000.00 - $300,000.00 per year, * 401(k)

  • Dental insurance
  • Flexible schedule
  • Health insurance
  • Paid time off
  • Relocation assistance
  • Vision insurance

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