Founding Backend Engineer

zaimler
San Mateo, CA

About Us

We are on a mission to bridge the gap between enterprise business knowledge and data, democratizing data discovery and curation to prepare organizations for the era of generative AI. Today's data tools are overly complex, poorly integrated, and siloed, forcing AI Practitioners and data scientists alike to spend more time wrestling with tools, relying on tribal knowledge, and navigating data lakes rather than doing meaningful data science work. The current landscape of data tools and processes is heavily manual and needs to catch up with the vast amount of data generated daily. With the advent of Gen AI and multi-modality, this challenge has only grown more complex and broken.

Backed by top VC funds, we are committed to making enterprise data AI-ready faster, more reliably, and with a stronger foundation of factual semantic knowledge. This leads to more accurate models, superior outcomes, and better business results. Our team of seasoned data infrastructure and machine learning experts (from LinkedIn, Visa, Truera, Hive, and Branch) has spent the past two decades building bespoke systems to solve these very challenges.

Join our growing team of ML research and data infrastructure experts. We're committed to empowering AI and data scientists to seamlessly integrate semantic learning with generative AI. Be part of our journey to shape the future of enterprise AI.

About the role

We are seeking a Backend Engineer with deep experience in microservices architecture to join our team. The ideal candidate will have expertise in building and operating distributed backend systems using technologies like Java, Ray, PostGres, and Kubernetes. In this role, you’ll be critical in designing, implementing, and scaling the core microservices that power our AI and data platform.

You’ll help define service boundaries, build robust APIs, and ensure reliable communication across our ingestion, extraction, and knowledge graph systems. We're looking for someone who brings strong backend engineering fundamentals and a track record of delivering production-grade systems in fast-moving environments.

What you’ll do

  • Design and implement core microservices that handle document ingestion, entity extraction, and graph construction
  • Define and enforce clean service interfaces and communication protocols (e.g., gRPC, REST)
  • Drive schema design and service ownership in a polyglot environment (Java + Rust)
  • Contribute to deployment and runtime infrastructure (Helm, Kubernetes, vLLM, Ray)
  • Build internal tooling and APIs that accelerate downstream teams working on retrieval and ranking
  • Help scale systems as we ingest more enterprise data and expand graph resolution logic

You’ll thrive in this role if you

  • Have 4+ years of experience building backend services in modern cloud environments
  • Are fluent in at least one strongly typed language (Rust, Java, etc.) and comfortable in dynamic ones (Python)
  • Understand distributed systems, service discovery, and observability (we use OpenTelemetry + Grafana)
  • Have experience implementing secure APIs and backend systems, including RBAC, authentication, and authorization patterns
  • Have strong opinions on API boundaries, fault tolerance, and making systems boring (in a good way)
  • Enjoy taking vague problems and turning them into clean, testable services
  • Are comfortable working in a high-context, fast-moving startup environment with minimal overhead

Nice to have

  • Experience working with knowledge graphs, embeddings, or semantic search
  • Familiarity with vLLM, Ray, or distributed compute runtimes
  • Background in data-intensive systems or working with unstructured inputs
  • Exposure to entity resolution, NER, or schema linking systems
Posted 2025-08-22

Recommended Jobs

Azerbaijani Transcriber

Productive Playhouse
Glendale, CA

Location: Glendale, CA office (not remote) Status: Project-based Pay: $23.00 per hour Benefits: Flexible schedule Requirement: Read and type in Azerbaijani With Productive Playhous…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-07

Product Manager II, Charger Experience

Evgo
Los Angeles, CA

Description Position at EVgo About EVgo:    EVgo (Nasdaq: EVGO) is one of the nation’s largest public fast charging networks for electric vehicles. Our mission is to expedite the mas…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-22

On-Site Reservations Sales Agent | Carneros Resort and Spa | Full Time

Carneros Resort and Spa
Napa, CA

Position Overview: The Reservation Sales Agent at Carneros Resort and Spa is responsible for managing guest reservations and providing exceptional customer service. This role involves handling inqui…

View Details
Posted 2025-07-29

VP of Sales

Tri Tool
Rancho Cordova, CA

VP OF SALES Tri Tool is a global leader in the design of high-performance machine tools.  More importantly, we design solutions and are problem solvers. We are uncompromising in our dedication to …

View Details
Posted 2025-07-30

Associate Editor, Entertainment

Fox Corporation
Los Angeles, CA

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY Fox News Media FOX News Media operates the FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business Network (FBN), FOX News Digital, FOX News Audio, FOX News Books, the direct-to-consumer d…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-07

Principal Product Manager - MLOps Platform

Lambda
San Francisco, CA

In 2012, Lambda started with a crew of AI engineers publishing research at top machine-learning conferences. We began as an AI company built by AI engineers. That hasn't changed. Today, we're on a mi…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-20

Product Manager II (ML & Client CRM)

Match Group
West Hollywood, CA

Our Mission Launched in 2012, Tinder® revolutionized how people meet, growing from 1 match to one billion matches in just two years. This rapid growth demonstrates its ability to fulfill a fundame…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-22

Food Champion

Taco Bell - B&G Food Enterprises
Cypress, CA

The Taco Bell Food Champion plays and important role in producing tasty food in a quick and efficient manner. YOU will set the tone for the Taco Bell customer experience and bring the great Taco Bell…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-20

Senior Manager, Enhanced Care Management and Community Supports (San Francisco)

San Francisco Health Plan
San Francisco, CA

Senior Manager, Enhanced Care Management and Community Supports Reporting to the Director of Care Management, the Senior Manager, Enhanced Care Management & Community Supports will oversee the opera…

View Details
Posted 2025-08-23