Founding Backend Engineer

About the company Our client is building the AI-enabled infrastructure to power the next generation of hiring – reimagining how people discover and secure their next career opportunity. We believe that everyone deserves an all-star talent agent helping them plan, manage, and accomplish their career goals, no matter their background, location, or education.

Through our flagship product, Copilot, we've helped over 1M+ job seekers discover and apply to over 100 million jobs - and we've done this with a tight-knit team of just 7 people. We're rapidly expanding on both the candidate and recruiter fronts, focused on our vision of building a common app and personal AI agent for your career.

Backed by top-tier investors including Craft and YCombinator, we're a mission-driven team working to democratize the job search and disrupt the way hiring works today.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services to help us serve millions of users daily.
• Work closely with the product team to launch new features.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers to design and implement RESTful APIs and shared API client libraries.
• Architect and manage deployment of our cloud infrastructure on GCP.
• Ensure high performance, reliability, and security of backend systems.

Job Requirements Seniority

• 4+ years of experience Python backend development experience--mid to senior career level preferred, though exceptional candidates with less experience will be considered if they have strong Python expertise and experience scaling large systems.

Work experience

• Track record of building production-grade backend services from scratch
• Previous experience as a founder or founding engineer is highly preferred.

Hard skills

• Strong Python backend development expertise
• Demonstrated ability to scaffold and set up projects independently.
• Knowledge of GCP and cloud-based scaling solutions.
• Experience with SQL optimization, protocols, and backend infrastructure.
• Node.js/TypeScript experience
• Simplify is looking for incredible senior software engineers willing to do IC. They should be fluent in AI, including OpenAI/Claude API & AI dev tools (Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, etc.).

Miscellaneous

• Must be willing to work in-office 4+ days per week
• Must be comfortable in early-stage startup environment (team of 7, doubling to 14)
• Active GitHub profile or contributions to open-source projects (especially in the Python ecosystem).

Traits to avoid

• No Python experience: This is a hard filter.
• Lack of scalability experience: Candidates should have worked on systems handling high traffic.
• Contract or staffing firm backgrounds: These candidates are less likely to meet the bar.