Backend Engineer

At Lapel, we believe the most hospitable companies win. We're building the data, infrastructure, and tools that help customer-facing teams understand every customer and act on that insight at scale.

Most internet businesses want to treat customers well, but their tools work against them. We’re building the layer that makes service feel personal again: unifying context, coordinating action, and closing the gap between intent and experience.

It’s a technically ambitious challenge spanning data infrastructure, AI, and systems design—with a deeply human outcome: helping software companies serve people better. We call it hospitality at scale.

We’re well-funded, backed by top-tier investors, and already working with incredible companies, from fast-growing startups to large enterprises. We’ll share more details when we talk.

As one of the first engineers, you’ll work directly with the founders to shape the foundation of our product, infrastructure, and engineering culture.

What You’ll Do

• Build, operate, and scale the Lapel platform from the ground up

• Work closely with founders, designers, and customers to translate ideas into robust products

• Help define and shape backend architecture, infra, and tooling decisions

• Own key projects end-to-end, from scoping to deployment to post-launch iteration

• Ship new systems and APIs using the latest and greatest tech like TypeScript, Drizzle, Temporal, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Pulsar, LLMs, and more

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

• Have 4+ years of engineering experience and a strong track record of shipping high-quality products at scale

• Are customer-obsessed, hungry, and creative — you turn ambiguity into systems that work

• Love fast-paced environments and working across disciplines

• Are collaborative and go the extra mile to help those around you to do their best work

• Are deeply curious and love learning new systems and filling in missing skills

This role is fully in-person at our San Francisco HQ. We work together in-office most days.

Compensation and Benefits

We believe great people build great companies—and we invest accordingly.

• Competitive salary + meaningful early-stage equity

• Full benefits: including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k)

• Generous time off: including many company holidays and coordinated team-wide breaks throughout the year to focus and recharge

• Office perks: lunch and dinner provided daily, health & wellness benefits

• Team culture: regular off-sites, tight feedback loops, and a bias toward action

Other notices

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.