Backend Engineer - Start up

Staff Backend Engineer | San Francisco (on-site) | Series A SMS Infrastructure Startup The opportunity A fast-growing startup is building the first outbound operating system for SMS. Its AI-first infrastructure lets enterprise brands run campaigns at billions of messages per month.

Fresh off a $50M Series A from top-tier investors, it has real traction and several new business lines launching across enterprise, SMB and political messaging. The engineering team is eight people today and growing to around 15. That means real ownership, direct impact and a seat close to the founders as the company scales.

What you’ll do

Own and build core backend systems across routing, messaging, delivery and automation Design and ship scalable production services handling billions of messages a month Drive 0→1 product development: entire product surfaces built from scratch, not just features Work closely with a lean, collaborative engineering team Solve hard infrastructure problems at scale and move quickly from idea to production Must-haves (please only apply if you meet all of these) 6+ years of backend-heavy software engineering experience At least 2 recent years as an engineer at a venture-backed, high-growth startup (Pre-Seed to Series B) Built at least one product from 0 to 1 Clear career progression: promoted to senior within about 5 years and now working at staff, lead or founding-engineer level Professional experience with Node.js and TypeScript Hands-on experience with AWS SQS or similar queue-based infrastructure Strong ownership: you take technical projects end-to-end with minimal hand-holding Strong communicator: you collaborate closely and can explain complex technical concepts in plain English Authorized to work in the US without current or future visa sponsorship Able to work on-site in San Francisco, 5 days a week Nice-to-haves Founding engineer, co-founder, or one of the first ~15 engineers at a startup Frontend experience (if you’re full-stack, around 70% backend and 30% frontend is ideal) This probably isn’t for you if… Your experience is only at large companies, with no recent startup time You prefer working heads-down rather than collaborating with the team What’s on offer Highly competitive base salary 225k - 300k plus meaningful equity Real ownership of core systems at a well-funded, early-stage company A fast interview process: intro with the CEO, system design, technical coding, a team culture chat, and an on-site visit with leadership (including dinner)