Senior AI-Powered Backend Engineer

United States Digital Space LLC; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Payward is building AI-powered agent systems to automate internal workflows and decision paths. The Agent Systems team designs inference pipelines and back-end services that orchestrate AI across internal APIs, maintaining reliability and observability as the platform scales.

You will prototype quickly, validate agent behaviors, and productionize what proves valuable, contributing to a 0→1 agent platform with cross-functional momentum.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and shipping production software systems.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals (APIs, distributed systems, data modeling, reliability).
• Experience across backend and occasional frontend surfaces.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML systems, LLMs, or inference pipelines in production.
• Ability to prototype rapidly while maintaining production-grade architecture.
• Strong systems thinking, orchestration, failure modes, and observability.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, 0→1 environments with high ownership.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship AI-powered agent systems that automate internal workflows and decision paths.
• Design and implement inference pipelines that reason over user interactions across internal systems.
• Prototype quickly, then productionize valuable components; architect backend services integrating internal APIs.
• Define patterns for safe, observable and controllable agent execution.
• Collaborate across product, infrastructure and operations to identify automation opportunities.
• Improve system speed, reliability, and signal quality as usage scales.
• Contribute to foundational design decisions for a 0→1 agent platform.

Skills

Backend engineering

APIs

Distributed systems

Data modeling

Reliability

AI/ML systems

LLMs

Inference pipelines

Prototype to production

Observability

Ownership

Job description

Payward is building AI-powered agent systems to automate internal workflows and decision paths. The Agent Systems team designs inference pipelines and back-end services that orchestrate AI across internal APIs, maintaining reliability and observability as the platform scales.

You will prototype quickly, validate agent behaviors, and productionize what proves valuable, contributing to a 0→1 agent platform with cross-functional momentum.