Founding Backend Engineer
David Joseph & Company
- San Francisco, California, United States
- San Francisco, California, United States
About
$150,000–$300,000 + 0.1%–1% equity
About the Company A Seed-stage AI company (founded 2024, $7.5M raised) building production-grade systems that convert complex documents into LLM-ready data for AI agents and large language models. The product preserves document structure and hierarchy while capturing domain-specific context for high-stakes workflows across Finance, Legal, and Healthcare, and is already deploying with enterprise customers. Founded 2024 · 1–10 people · Industry: AI Tools.
The Role A founding, backend & infrastructure-heavy engineering role on a small, talent-dense team. You'll own production systems end-to-end and partner closely with the founders and research team to turn research prototypes into production-grade, scalable systems.
What you'll be doing
Architect, build, and scale core backend systems powering document intelligence and VLM-based workflows
Own production infrastructure end-to-end: deployments, monitoring, performance, reliability
Design and operate high-throughput, low-latency services in real production environments
Take systems from R&D → production → enterprise scale
Build and maintain cloud and on-prem deployments (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm) for enterprise customers
Establish best practices for CI/CD, observability, debugging, and incident response
Tech stack:
Python (required); C++/Rust (plus); distributed systems (microservices, queues, Redis); cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure); Docker, Kubernetes, Helm; Terraform / Pulumi
Requirements
2-5 years of experience
Ability to work in-person at San Francisco office
Hands-on experience building backend infrastructure
Green Flags
Graduated from top-tier schools (IIT Bombay, Stanford, etc.)
Very early stage startup experience (first 1-3 engineers)
Experience at companies with strong technical DNA
Research experience
Red Flags
Only big tech experience (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) without startup exposure
Experience only on abstract/high-level work without hands-on technical involvement
10+ years experience (too senior, not hands-on enough)
Only enterprise/large company experience without touching core technical elements
Why Join
A founding technical seat that defines the engineering archetype and sets the team's technical ceiling
True end-to-end ownership across backend architecture, infrastructure, deployment, and reliability
Real enterprise traction in high-stakes verticals (Finance, Legal, Healthcare)
Details
Location: San Francisco, CA
Work policy: In-person
Compensation: $150,000–$300,000 + equity
Visa sponsorship: H-1B, O-1, OPT
Employment type: Full-time
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Languages
- English
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