Backend and Infrastructure Engineer

Desert Ant Labs; Netherlands; Remote; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary and equity

Amsterdam office

Remote-friendly

Job summary

Desert Ant Labs is seeking a backend services engineer to write, host, and run the services behind our models—from storage and delivery to CI and on customers’ servers. You’ll work with the engineering team to keep the ecosystem fast, reliable, and portable across providers, cloud platforms, and devices.

You’ll build CI for SDK and model releases (macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, web), deploy containers and serverless components, and set up our own servers and monitoring.

Qualifications

• Have written backend services and kept them running in production.
• Know at least one cloud deeply, like Scaleway, AWS, Google Cloud, or another provider, and keep what you build portable to another one.
• Have set up Linux servers from scratch, physical or managed: installs, users and permissions, SSH, firewalls, and updates.
• Have built CI and release pipelines that other engineers trust, including macOS and Windows builds.

Responsibilities

• Write and run the services that store and deliver model files, so every download is fast and verified.
• Write and run the service that receives the SDKs' daily usage counts, and keep it private and cheap to run.
• Write the internal tools and small services the team asks for, and maintain them after they ship: updates, fixes, and tests.
• Build and keep up CI for every SDK and model release: macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and the web.
• Package and deploy our models for servers: containers, serverless functions, and the inference hosts customers pick.
• Set up our own servers from scratch: operating system installs, users and permissions, networking, and updates.
• Keep our websites and internal tools running: deploys, DNS, access, secrets, and monitoring.
• Work with the research team on the path from a trained model to a published release.

Skills

Backend services

Cloud platforms

CI/CD pipelines

Linux servers

Job description

Write, host, and run the services behind our models, from model downloads and CI to our own servers and the ones customers run our models on.

About Desert Ant Labs

About the role

Our models run on the device. Getting them to developers takes a cloud: developers download model files from our storage and from Hugging Face, the SDKs send one usage count a day, every SDK release builds and tests on Apple platforms, Android, Windows, Linux, and the web, and some customers run our models on their own servers. You write the services behind all of it, host them, and keep them running, with the engineering team. We run on Scaleway and on our own servers in racks we manage, with CI on GitHub Actions. We keep the setup portable between providers, so it also runs on the clouds our customers use. The goal is fast model downloads everywhere, releases that build and test in minutes, and our models running on a server as easily as on a phone.

What you will do

• Write and run the services that store and deliver model files, so every download is fast and verified.
• Write and run the service that receives the SDKs' daily usage counts, and keep it private and cheap to run.
• Write the internal tools and small services the team asks for, and maintain them after they ship: updates, fixes, and tests.
• Build and keep up CI for every SDK and model release: macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and the web.
• Package and deploy our models for servers: containers, serverless functions, and the inference hosts customers pick.
• Set up our own servers from scratch: operating system installs, users and permissions, networking, and updates.
• Keep our websites and internal tools running: deploys, DNS, access, secrets, and monitoring.
• Work with the research team on the path from a trained model to a published release.

You might be a fit if you

• Have written backend services and kept them running in production: the code, the deploys, and the fixes when they broke.
• Know at least one cloud deeply, like Scaleway, AWS, Google Cloud, or another provider, and keep what you build on it portable to another one.
• Have set up Linux servers from scratch, physical or managed: installs, users and permissions, SSH, firewalls, and updates.
• Have built CI and release pipelines that other engineers trust, including macOS and Windows builds.
• Manage infrastructure as code, and automate a task the second time you do it by hand.
• Know what a service logs and what a month of it costs.
• Write clean, tested code, and spot a weak change in review, whether a person or an agent wrote it.
• Plan and run your work through coding agents such as Claude Code, with a low tolerance for slop, and keep trying new ways to work with them that make the team faster without lowering the bar.
• Racked, cabled, or replaced parts in physical servers.
• Served ML models on CPU or GPU servers, or in serverless functions.
• Ran build machines for mobile or desktop apps.

How we work

We're a small, flat team, and we build the models, the SDKs, and the apps that use them. Detail and Subwave, our own apps, run our models in production.

Start what needs starting without waiting to be asked, and finish what you start. Take on work outside your role when a project needs you.

We ship quickly, so we cut scope until only the part users notice is left. Anyone can comment on your work or redo your draft, and we say early when work isn't ready. We read that feedback as help.

We judge the work by what shipped and what changed because of it. Nobody counts hours.

What we offer

• Salary and equity, based on level.
• In our Amsterdam office, or remote anywhere between Eastern Time in North America (UTC-5) and Central European Time (UTC+1), so everyone shares part of the working day.

Location: Amsterdam or Remote (UTC-5 to UTC+1)