Senior Software Engineer, Backend Platform

The role

You will build and maintain backend services, shared platform capabilities, and developer tooling to support Handshake AI and internal AI initiatives. The work focuses on service architecture, APIs, data systems, performance, reliability, and developer experience.

What you will do

• Design, build, and operate backend services and APIs that support HAI products and internal AI initiatives.
• Develop shared libraries, services, and architectural patterns.
• Improve performance, scalability, reliability, and observability of HAI's backend systems.
• Lead work involving database design, data access patterns, query performance, indexing, caching, and data model evolution.
• Identify recurring product-engineering problems and turn them into reusable platform capabilities.
• Make architectural decisions across mature systems and new services.
• Contribute to internal AI initiatives including shared capabilities for LLM-powered and agentic systems.
• Partner with ML and Cloud Engineering teams on model and service integration, orchestration, evaluation, observability, and failure handling.
• Participate in technical planning, design and code reviews, operational support, and incident response.
• Mentor other engineers and help establish backend engineering standards.

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, primarily in backend or platform engineering.
• Experience designing, building, and operating production services and APIs.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, data modeling, service boundaries, common backend architecture patterns, and reliability and performance tradeoffs.
• Strong experience with relational databases, including schema design, query optimization, indexing, transactions, and diagnosing database-related performance problems.
• Familiarity with backend technologies such as Temporal, Redis, Elasticsearch, GraphQL, or event-driven systems.
• Experience operating services in cloud and containerized environments.
• Practical knowledge of LLM-powered systems, including concepts such as model and tool integration, RAG, agent orchestration, prompt management, evaluation, and observability.
• A record of independently driving ambiguous projects from problem definition through production rollout.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate with product engineers and other teams.

Nice to have

• Deep TypeScript and Next.js experience
• Experience with PostgreSQL
• Direct production experience with product features powered by ML, LLMs, or agents
• Experience with LLM orchestration frameworks or agent architectures involving tool use, memory, and multi-step workflows
• Experience building internal AI tools or shared AI capabilities used by other engineers
• Experience creating internal platforms, paved paths, or self-service tools used by other engineers
• Experience modernizing mature backend systems while continuing to support active product development
• Experience with event-driven architecture or high-throughput data systems

Benefits

• Equity in a fast-growing company
• 401(k) match
• Competitive compensation
• Financial coaching
• Paid parental leave
• Fertility benefits
• Parental coaching
• Medical, dental, & vision
• Mental health support
• $500 wellness stipend
• $2,000 learning stipend
• Ongoing development

About the company

Handshake powers 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions. Handshake AI is a fast-growing AI data business that works with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations and publish benchmarks.