Senior Backend Platform Engineer

About Salt AI

Salt AI is on a mission to revolutionize life sciences with reliable, collaborative and forward thinking AI solutions. Founded by leaders in high-performance computing and AI, we empower teams to achieve breakthroughs faster. Our platform is the backbone for cross-functional collaboration, rapid model interchange, and data integrity—fueling innovation in science and healthcare. The Salt AI team are skilled technologists, backed by strong VC partners with a mission to build exceptional user experiences within AI development.

Salt AI's platform prioritizes data integrity and reliability while providing a robust visual-first interface for cross-functional collaboration, allowing for rapid interchangeability of best of breed AI models.

The Role: What You'll Do

We're looking for a Senior Backend Platform Engineer with deep distributed systems experience to help build the core infrastructure of our AI platform for life sciences. You'll play a key role in designing high-performance systems that support AI model orchestration, real-time collaboration, and secure scientific workflows.

Responsibilities:

• Design and build scalable backend microservices using Python for AI workflow orchestration
• Implement distributed systems for real-time AI model orchestration using Dapr and event-driven architectures
• Build high-performance gRPC and RESTful APIs for inter-service communication
• Design reliable message queuing and event streaming systems (Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Implement infrastructure-as-code using Terraform for multi-cloud deployments
• Develop backend services for AI/ML workflow orchestration with strong reliability and observability
• Optimize containerized workloads and GPU resource management in Kubernetes environments
• Build data processing pipelines with emphasis on scientific data integrity and traceability
• Collaborate with AI/ML engineers to integrate distributed backend services into the platform
• Contribute to frontend development using React and TypeScript when needed for full-stack features
• Participate in system design, code reviews, and architectural decision-making

Technical Requirements - Core Skills (Must Have):

• 5+ years of backend development with strong distributed systems experience
• Expert-level Kubernetes experience (EKS, GKE, or self-managed clusters)
• Proficiency Python or Golang, Typescript, Kotlin, etc for microservices development
• Hands-on experience with Dapr, service mesh, or similar microservices frameworks
• Strong understanding of event-driven architectures and message queuing systems
• Experience building gRPC services and RESTful APIs
• Solid DevOps background: Docker, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation
• Experience with workflow orchestration systems (Argo Workflows, Kubeflow, Temporal, or similar)
• Understanding of observability (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Datadog, or similar)
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure) with multi-cloud awareness
• Competency in frontend technologies (React, TypeScript) for occasional full-stack contributions
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills in remote-first environments

Preferred / Bonus Skills (Nice To Have):

• Experience building Kubernetes Operators or Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)
• Background in MLOps, ML model serving (Triton, KServe, Ray Serve)
• Experience with GPU workload management and resource optimization
• Contributions to open-source cloud-native projects (CNCF ecosystem)
• Familiarity with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd, Consul)
• Experience with vector databases and NoSQL systems for AI applications
• Background in high-performance computing or scientific computing domains
• Experience with feature flag systems and progressive delivery (canary deployments)
• Life sciences, healthcare, or regulated industry experience
• Understanding of data lineage, provenance, and reproducibility in scientific workflows
• Experience migrating workloads between cloud providers or to hybrid environments

What Makes You A Great Fit:

• You have deep experience building distributed systems that scale
• You're passionate about cloud-native architecture and Kubernetes-based platforms
• You think in terms of reliability, observability, and system resilience
• You've shipped features end to end - from infrastructure to backend to occasional frontend work
• You're comfortable working in microservices architectures with event-driven patterns
• You enjoy solving complex orchestration and workflow management challenges
• You have strong opinions about API design, system boundaries, and service communication
• You're proactive about DevOps practices and infrastructure automation
• You're excited about AI/ML platforms and want to build the backbone that powers them
• You thrive in autonomous environments where you own problems end-to-end
• You communicate effectively in async, remote-first teams across time zones
• You're curious about life sciences and the impact AI can have in healthcare and research

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity package
• 100% Employee Covered Medical, Dental, Vision Plan Base Plans (PPO & HMO)
• Life Insurance, 401k, Flexible Spending Accounts, & More

Company Description:

Based in Southern California, Salt AI is pioneering the future of life sciences with advanced AI. Founded in 2024 by Aber Whitcomb and Jim Benedetto—veterans of MySpace, Jam City, Gravity, and Core Scientific—our leadership team brings over 15 years of collaboration. We're not just building products, but transforming what's possible in research and discovery. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to an inclusive team. If you're excited about shaping the future of AI in life sciences, we'd love to connect with you.