Backend / Systems Engineer

• Strong backend engineering skills in Python and/or TypeScript/Node.js, with willingness to work across both.\n
• Practical experience with PostgreSQL or another relational database, including data modeling and transactions.\n
• Experience shipping and maintaining production backend services.\n
• Familiarity with background jobs, queues, or event-driven processing, and an understanding of failure handling and data consistency.\n
• The ability to investigate production problems, design clear interfaces, and deliver maintainable solutions.\n

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Around 3+ years of backend engineering experience is a useful guide, not a hard requirement. The systems you’ve owned matter more than the number. \n

Nice to have: experience with workflow engines, multi-tenant applications, authorization, FastAPI, or agent tooling. Prior LLM experience is not required. Strong backend fundamentals and an interest in learning the agent domain matter more. \n

Introduction

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xHeron takes responsibility for guest operations for short-term rental businesses: guest communication, coordinating teams, resolving issues. Today, that operating scope is delivered through a mix of people, software, and AI. We’re building the technology to handle more of that work autonomously, without turning into another tool customers have to supervise. \n

We’re looking for a Backend / Systems Engineer to build the software that makes this reliable: persistent state, safe execution, permissions, and recovery across humans, agents, and external systems. \n

Your tasks

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Tasks

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What You’ll Own \n \n

• Data models & state: Build backend services and data models that track operational work, ownership, and outcomes over time.\n
• Asynchronous workflows: Develop asynchronous workflows with reliable handling of retries, timeouts, external events, and interrupted execution.\n
• APIs & tool execution: Build shared APIs and tool-execution interfaces, including authorization and customer-data isolation.\n
• Knowledge infrastructure: Improve the infrastructure for storing, versioning, and serving operational knowledge.\n
• Platform quality: Strengthen testing and observability while evolving the existing platform alongside our CTO, AI engineer, and product engineering team.\n

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Why Join xHeron \n \n

• Real ownership: you’re working on foundational product architecture, not cloud configuration, with substantial technical ownership from day one.\n
• Direct founder access: you’ll work directly with our CTO, shaping how humans and agents work together.\n
• We invest in our own: your ownership grows as the system does, this isn’t a role with a ceiling.\n
• Upside: VSOP alongside salary; you’re building this with us.\n

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Our Process \n \n

• Intro call (30 min): a conversation with Friedrich (CTO) about your background, what you’ve built, and why this role.\n
• Technical take-home case study: a short, real engineering problem, close to what you’d actually be building.\n
• Case study interview (1 hour): you walk us through your thinking, not just the final code.\n
• Culture fit (30 min): meet both Founders and make sure it’s a fit both ways.\n