Senior DevOps & Backend Engineer (AI / LegalTech / SF)

Tl;dr — Join Callidus, the most advanced legal generative‑AI platform, as a hands‑on DevOps & Backend Engineer. Work with state‑of‑the‑art AI, an experienced founder‑led team, and a fresh funding round. Competitive total comp. Hustle culture. Dallas.

About Callidus

We are entering the golden era of AI. Over the next 5-10 years, breakthroughs will drive a completely new world. Callidus is on a mission to transform the $1T global legal market and we’re well on our way.

Callidus is the most advanced legal generative AI platform on the market today. We offer a uniquely powerful platform, enabling lawyers (as one example) to draft a full 30‑page legal brief in ~10 minutes—saving about a week of effort. We are an engineering‑led organization that empowers talent to build collaboratively toward our mission.

More than 1,000 paying lawyers rely on Callidus today, and ARR is growing >20% MoM, putting us in the top 1% of funded startups at this level. We’re ready to scale and are looking to triple the size of our team.

We work hard, ship fast, and win together. 

Role Overview

We’re searching for a DevOps & Backend engineer who:

• Loves building with state‑of‑the‑art tech in a developer‑first company
• Can help us create a reliable and scalable environment
• Wants to go “all‑in” on a high‑growth startup
• Can design and ship great AI backend systems
• Will be as obsessed with the success of Callidus as the founders

Tech Stack

• Cloud: Azure
• Backend: Python (FastAPI), Redis/ARQ, Postgres
• Frontend: React / Next.js, Node
• AI: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI, Meta, Mistral (choosing best‑in‑class per task)

Seniority Level

Senior Engineer to Staff/Principal Engineer considered for this role. Mid-level engineers considered for other roles.

This role will report to the CTO.

Responsibilities

We want highly talented engineers that want to be hands-on. You’ll be an individual contributor Software Engineer (everyone at Callidus is a doer). Expect to:

• Be responsible for our Microsoft Azure infrastructure and deployments..
• Ensure high uptime across our platform.
• Design, build, and maintain complex backend systems.
• Engineer reliable, scalable Gen‑AI workflows (hybrid RAG, agents, chains of thought, etc.).
• Collaborate daily with lawyers and Product to ship measurable user value.
• Uphold code quality, security, and performance through reviews and automated tests.
• Help guide the organization to a reliable production environment with proper staging and beta environments. This includes valuable insight into the proper ways to produce a deployment environment without interruption.
• Enforce a security focused environment with proper key management, SOC2 compliance, and proper log and storage management.

Qualifications

Core Requirements

• Strong DevOps skills on Azure (or AWS/GCP/VertexAI with quick ramp‑up).
• Backend engineering in Python.
• Database management, architecture, and backend engineering experience.
• Asynchronous Task Management: Experience with job queue and task orchestration systems such as Celery, Redis Queue (RQ), or similar solutions for managing background processing, scheduled tasks, and distributed workloads in production environments.
• Ability to commute to Dallas office ~4-5 days per week.

Soft Skills

• Clear, concise communication—low words : insights ratio.
• Ownership mindset: You do what you say and surface risks early.
• Ability to work well with ambiguity and low amounts of process.
• Excellent problem solving capabilities.

Passion & Dedication

• Genuine excitement for AI and building category‑defining products.
• Fantastic work ethic & ability to take on a very demanding role (similar culture to xAI, Amazon, Figure, etc.).
• Understanding that this will be much more than a 9‑to‑5. The high effort is easy when you love what you do, the company you’re building, and the mission you’re fulfilling.

Nice‑to‑Haves

• Proven record of shipping high‑quality products quickly.
• Experience working with LLM APIs and prompt engineering.
• Ability to implement sophisticated LLM techniques (hybrid RAG, hallucination guardrails, agentic workflows).
• Startup experience.
• Legal or LegalTech experience.
• Personal use of AI tooling (Cursor, CoPilot, Midjourney, etc.).
• Engineering degree.

Interview Process (fast!)

1. Calibration call with AI Fund sourcing manager.
2. 30 min chat with Head of Operations.
3. Submission of prior work or deep dive problem solving with a developer.
4. Technical + culture deep‑dive with CTO.
5. Founder session with CEO (problem‑solving + values).

We move very quickly for the right candidate.

Location

• U.S. based required.
• Dallas, TX strongly preferred. Will also consider "unicorn candidates" in McKinney, TX, Austin, TX, and San Francisco, CA.

Compensation

• Base Salary: $140,000 - $200,000
• Meaningful equity
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage + Life Insurance
• PTO + company holidays

Why Join Us?

• Build on the cutting edge of the most transformative tech since . . . fire?
• Play a critically important role in our success at an engineering-led company.
• Become one of the first 15 employees at a company poised for explosive growth.
• Tackle high‑impact, technically hard problems that competitors avoid.
• Reap outsized rewards in equity and professional growth.

Callidus is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.