webAI™

Backend/Systems Engineer

webAI™

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Hybrid

Location: Austin • Texas • 🇺🇸 United States

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Job Level

Mid-LevelSenior

Tech Stack

AWSAzureCloudDistributed SystemsGoGoogle Cloud PlatformGRPCJavaPythonRust

About the role

  • Design and build identity & session systems
  • Implement auth flows, device registration, key management integrations, token/session lifecycle, and account recovery patterns.
  • Support multi-device identity and secure device-to-account bindings.
  • Ship sync and encrypted state primitives
  • Build APIs and services that enable state sync across devices (event-based or state-based replication).
  • Partner with client engineers to support end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) state where the server coordinates without needing plaintext access.
  • Implement lightweight cloud coordination
  • Create “coordination services,” not “big backend”: rendezvous, discovery, sequencing, fan-out, rate-limits, abuse controls, and reliability tooling.
  • Prefer minimal durable state and clear boundaries; push logic to the edge/client when appropriate.
  • Build real-time messaging, presence, and group chat capabilities
  • Implement reliable messaging pipelines (delivery semantics, retries, ordering strategies, idempotency).
  • Support presence and group membership (joins/leaves, device fan-out, read receipts/typing signals as needed).
  • Integrate with pub/sub or streaming systems, and tune for latency.
  • Edge-aware systems thinking
  • Design for intermittent connectivity, offline-first behavior, device constraints, and high tail-latency networks.
  • Make trade-offs explicit: consistency vs availability, ordering vs throughput, durability vs cost.
  • Operate what you build
  • Add observability (metrics, tracing, structured logging), define SLOs, and participate in on-call/incident response (lightweight rotation).
  • Improve reliability: backpressure, load shedding, graceful degradation, and safe rollouts.

Requirements

  • 3–6 years of backend/systems engineering experience (or equivalent impact).
  • Strong fundamentals in distributed systems: consistency models, replication, idempotency, failure modes, and performance tuning.
  • Experience building production services in at least one systems-friendly language (e.g., Go, Rust, Java, C++, Python) and comfort reading others.
  • Familiarity with real-time systems: WebSockets, gRPC streaming, pub/sub, queues, or event-driven architectures.
  • Experience designing APIs and data models with security and privacy in mind.
  • Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerization, and CI/CD.
Benefits
  • Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.
  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits package.
  • 401k Match (US-based only)
  • $200/mos Health and Wellness Stipend
  • $400/year Continuing Education Credit
  • $500/year Function Health subscription (US-based only)
  • Free parking, for in-office employees
  • Unlimited Approved PTO
  • Parental Leave for Eligible Employees
  • Supplemental Life Insurance

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard skills
identity systemssession systemsauth flowskey managementAPI designreal-time messagingdistributed systemsperformance tuningproduction servicesdata models
Soft skills
collaborationproblem-solvingtrade-off analysisobservabilityincident response