Senior Backend Engineer- AI Agent

Shanghai Express, Inc
Palo Alto, CA, United States
about 2 months ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Experience level
Expert
Experience required
1 year minimum
Compensation
$180,000.0 - $300,000.0
Working hours
Regular working hours
Job source

Tech stack

Artificial Intelligence Amazon Web Services Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems Software as a Service Cloud Computing Code Review Continuous Integration Database Design Database Models Software Debugging Distributed Systems Python (Programming Language)
+24 more
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 Golang 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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