Founding Backend Engineer (Onsite)

Job description

Hello 👋, I'm Destiny Lalane — a recruiter who works with early-stage startups to help them hire their first teams. Today I'm sharing the latest role I'm working on: a Series A startup with $15M in funding, where I'm partnering directly with the COO on this search. I personally review every application that comes through. **Submitting an application is the only way to be considered for this role — please don't DM or email me directly. Those messages will not be reviewed.** ### About the Company Our client is the monitoring platform built specifically for AI agents. Engineering teams at some of the fastest-growing AI companies use the product to get alerts when their AI agents fail silently — so engineers can dig into the conversations or traces, understand the root cause, and fix it fast. The company is YC-backed (W24) and funded by top-tier investors including a major Tier 1 venture firm, leading AI-focused funds, and angel investors who founded several of the most well-known dev tools and AI companies. ### Why It Matters AI agents fail constantly — in ways both hilarious and terrifying. Regular software throws exceptions. AI agents fail *silently*, leaving engineers with almost no visibility into how their agents actually perform. The current status quo is sifting through millions of logs and debugging flaky evals that don't match real-world results. Evals are like unit tests — they confirm a model got specific test cases right. But in the real world, agents call thousands of tools, run for hours, and encounter millions of unpredictable actions. That's where this product comes in. It learns the unique shape of each AI agent's issues — starting from presets like Laziness, Forgetting, or Task Failure, and automatically tuning itself to each agent to discover the unknown unknowns. With one click, AI engineers can track issues or topics across 100% of their production data: frequency over time, how many users are affected, relevant properties, and more. To process hundreds of millions of events, the team gradually trains small custom models — private to each customer — that learn to uniquely understand how each customer's product is used. As part of the early team, you'll play a fundamental role in shaping the company — from strategy and product decisions, to scaling the team, to shaping the future of AI agents. ### Your Focus - Build out world-class infrastructure servicing millions of requests a day and growing - Architect, implement, and scale the application - Iterate quickly without compromising on quality - Deeply understand the customer ### Ideal Candidate - Knows how to balance short-term and long-term speed - Proven experience scaling production applications - Interest in AI products and tools (ideally has built with them, or is an avid user) - Growth mindset - Willing to do whatever it takes to solve a problem - Must be in person in San Francisco (or willing to relocate) ### Compensation, Location & Authorization - **Base salary:** $150K – $250K, based on experience - **Equity:** 0.10% – 1.50% - **Location:** Onsite in San Francisco, 5 days per week. - **Work Authorization:** Candidates must be currently authorized to work in the United States without requiring visa sponsorship from the employer now or in the future. ### Equal Opportunity & AI Disclosure We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. Our client is an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. As part of our recruiting process, we may use AI-assisted tools to help with tasks such as sourcing candidates, organizing applications, and summarizing interview notes. These tools support — but do not replace — human decision-making, and any final hiring decisions are made by people. Candidate data submitted through this application is handled in accordance with applicable privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).