Principle/Senior Backend Software Engineer

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Oakland / $280000 - $350000 annum

INFO

Salary

SALARY:

$280000 - $350000

Location

LOCATION

Oakland

Job Type
JOB TYPE

Permanent

Principal / Senior Backend Software Engineer (AI Systems & Agentic Workflows)

About the Role

We are seeking a hands-on Principal or Senior Backend Software Engineer to help build the next generation of AI-powered products and workflows on top of large-scale knowledge systems and healthcare datasets.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys operating at the intersection of backend engineering, AI systems, product development, and platform architecture. You'll work closely with technical leadership to design, build, deploy, and iterate on intelligent systems that leverage agentic AI workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), structured knowledge retrieval, and large language models.

This is not a research role. We are looking for builders who can take ideas from concept to production and thrive in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment.


What You'll Do

  • Design and build agentic AI workflows that automate complex business and user-facing processes.
  • Develop production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems utilizing large internal and domain-specific datasets.
  • Implement AI-powered knowledge systems combining structured data, semantic retrieval, embeddings, and LLMs.
  • Build backend services and APIs that support AI applications at scale.
  • Design secure, scalable cloud-native architectures and distributed systems.
  • Work closely with product, design, data, and engineering teams to rapidly validate, prototype, and ship new capabilities.
  • Partner directly with leadership to influence architecture, technical direction, and long-term AI strategy.
  • Continuously improve observability, reliability, evaluation, and safety of AI systems in production.

Key Responsibilities

AI & Agentic Systems

  • Multi-agent workflow orchestration
  • LLM-powered applications
  • AI copilots and assistants
  • Tool calling and agent execution frameworks
  • AI evaluation, observability, and monitoring
  • Prompt engineering and workflow optimization

Knowledge Systems

  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Embeddings and vector search
  • Knowledge graphs
  • Search and discovery systems
  • Semantic retrieval pipelines
  • Context management and ranking

Backend Engineering

  • API design and development
  • Distributed systems and microservices
  • Event-driven architectures
  • Data processing and workflow automation
  • Data platform integrations
  • Cloud infrastructure and deployment

Desired Technical Experience

Backend

  • Python
  • FastAPI, Django, Flask, or similar frameworks
  • REST APIs
  • PostgreSQL
  • Event-driven systems

AI / ML

  • OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or similar models
  • LangChain, LangGraph, MCP, CrewAI, or comparable frameworks
  • Agentic AI architectures
  • RAG systems
  • Vector databases
  • AI evaluation frameworks

Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • CI/CD
  • Observability and monitoring platforms

Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Data pipelines
  • Embeddings
  • Search infrastructure

Preferred Backgrounds

Successful candidates often come from:

  • Founding Engineer roles
  • Startup CTO or technical founder backgrounds
  • Senior backend engineering positions
  • Applied AI engineering teams
  • Search and retrieval platforms
  • Knowledge systems
  • Healthcare technology
  • SaaS companies
  • AI-native startups
















CONTACT

Joshua Bayer

Recruitment Consultant

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