Senior Backend Engineer

Job description

SENIOR BACKEND ENGINEER San Francisco / Hybrid / Remote About Nash Logistics is the substrate beneath every economy that has ever existed, and it remains the least intelligently coordinated activity in the modern world. Consumer expectations are converging on instantaneous, perfect, free. Networks are not. We call this gap the Logistics Singularity, and closing it is the work. Nash is the Autonomic Logistics OS. We unify decisioning, execution, and capacity into a single programmable system that pursues a business’s objectives continuously, adapts as conditions change, and runs the operation at equilibrium across orders, fleets, carriers, providers, and customers. The world’s largest retailers, grocers, and pharmacies (including Walmart, 7-Eleven, Woolworths, and Coles) run their critical workflows on Nash. Founded by Mahmoud Ghulman and Aziz Alghunaim, and backed by Y Combinator, a16z, and other top investors. We are based in San Francisco. About the Role We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to design and build the systems at the core of the Autonomic Logistics OS: the services that turn real-world constraints into real-time decisions, route millions of jobs to the right execution path, and keep promises across fleets, gig networks, and carrier providers. You will work directly with our VP of Engineering, CTO/ co-founder, alongside a tight, high-ownership engineering team. This is a role for someone energized by complexity. Logistics has no static optimum: stores close, weather changes, providers exit markets, demand shifts. The systems you build will sense those conditions, recalculate, and continuously refind the equilibrium in motion that keeps a customer’s promises intact. What You’ll Do - Design and build the backend services that power Nash’s decisioning, execution, and capacity layers, including job orchestration, carrier selection, real-time tracking, and post-purchase workflows. - Own complex systems from architecture through deployment, observability, and continuous performance work in production. - Build and harden the integrations that connect Nash to fragmented carrier networks, fleet systems, and partner APIs, treating reliability as a first-class product feature. - Collaborate with frontend, product, design, and data partners to ship intelligent, user-first experiences, and with operations to encode real-world workflows into how the system runs. - Improve transaction and policy infrastructure for accuracy, performance, and resilience as volume and modalities grow. - Raise the bar on documentation, testing, code quality, and incident response. - Make pragmatic technical bets that move the business forward without accumulating fragile complexity. What You’ll Bring - 5+ years building and shipping backend systems in production, with clear ownership of services that handled real load. - Strong proficiency in Python and modern backend frameworks. Experience with Go or TypeScript is a plus. - Fluency designing RESTful APIs and working with relational databases (PostgreSQL, AWS RDS). - Solid command of cloud platforms (AWS preferred), managed services (serverless, queues, databases), and CI/CD pipelines. - Deep instincts for scalable system design and performance optimization, with a sharp eye for the failure modes that matter. - Product sense: the ability to balance technical quality with speed and user value, and to push back when the right thing to build is not the thing on the spec. - High agency in a fast-paced environment. You notice what needs improvement and act on it. - A collaborative communicator who writes clearly and partners well across functions. Bonus - Experience with AsyncIO, event-driven architectures, or integration-heavy systems. - Familiarity with risk, security, or compliance-driven domains. - A track record building distributed systems that process large transaction volumes with strict reliability requirements. - Exposure to AI or rule-based automation systems, especially in operational contexts. - Prior startup experience (not required). Why This Role Matters Nash is becoming the operating system that the world’s largest retailers, grocers, and pharmacies will run their logistics on. The backend systems you build sit at the center of it: making millions of decisions a day, holding promises through volatility, and continuously re-tuning how the network performs as the real world shifts. If you want to build the autonomic infrastructure that the next era of commerce will run on, and see your work compound across every retailer, fleet, and customer that runs on Nash, this is the role. More about Nash http://Nash.AI NASH IS THE PLATFORM THAT POWERS MODERN LOGISTICS. Commerce has inverted. For decades, customers came to where products and services were. Now products and services come to them, on their terms, in real time. That shift has turned every company into a logistics company, even though almost none of them were built to be one. Couriers, fleets, gig workers, parcel carriers, in-store labor, and increasingly autonomous systems all have to be coordinated in real time, against tighter windows and rising expectations, with hard-fought customer trust on the line. Nash unifies decisioning, execution, and capacity into a single programmable platform. Real-time, AI-native intelligence determines what should happen, operational control executes it, and the platform dynamically orchestrates capacity from any source: a company's own fleets, partners, or the Nash delivery network. Whether a job involves a courier, a gig driver, an internal fleet, a store employee, a technician, or an autonomous vehicle, Nash selects the right resource and manages execution through completion. We power delivery and logistics for some of the most recognizable brands in commerce, including Walmart, Urban Outfitters, 7-Eleven, and Woolworths, alongside platforms like Shopify and Toast. Over the next decade, logistics will become as foundational to commerce as payments, cloud, and connectivity. Nash is the platform that powers it. Nash was founded in 2021 by Mahmoud Ghulman (2x Founder, MIT) and Aziz Alghunaim (2x Founder, 2x YC, Ex-Palantir, MIT) and is backed by Y Combinator, a16z, and other top investors. We are headquartered in San Francisco. WHAT YOU’LL LOVE ABOUT US ✅ Early-stage, well-funded startup – directly impact the company and grow your career! ✅ Quarterly broader team on-sites to bond with teammates ✅ Competitive compensation and opportunity for equity ✅ Flexible paid time off ✅ Health, dental, and vision insurance