AfterQuery — Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure/Platform

davidjoseph-co; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity

Job summary

AfterQuery is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure/Platform to design and build the core infrastructure powering data generation, evaluation, and agentic systems. The role offers broad ownership and direct collaboration with the founding team in a highly technical environment.

You will architect and develop shared infrastructure, build scalable systems for large datasets, and create reusable APIs for engineers and researchers to move quickly and reliably.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building and owning production distributed systems.
• Strong backend proficiency in Python and/or JavaScript (Node.js/Next.js).
• Cloud infrastructure experience in GCP or AWS.
• Message queues and event‑driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Pub/Sub).
• High‑throughput data pipelines and asynchronous processing.
• System scalability, performance, and reliability ownership.
• Shared infrastructure, APIs, and internal platform development.
• Observability, monitoring, and fault tolerance design.
• Long‑term architecture ownership across data pipelines, compute and storage.
• Cross‑functional collaboration with engineering and research teams.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop the shared infrastructure powering data generation platforms, human-in-the-loop systems, and evaluation pipelines
• Build systems capable of processing large-scale datasets and high-throughput workloads with strong reliability guarantees
• Create reusable infrastructure and APIs that let product engineers and researchers build quickly and reliably on top of core systems
• Design systems with strong observability, monitoring, and fault tolerance for production workloads at scale
• Help define long‑term system architecture across data pipelines, compute infrastructure, task orchestration, and storage systems
• Work closely with engineers and researchers to support new AI experimentation workflows and platform capabilities
• Define standards for system design, deployment, reliability, and infrastructure operations

Skills

Distributed systems

Backend development

Cloud experience

Data pipelines

Observability

APIs

Cross-functional collaboration

Architecture ownership

Education

Undergraduate degree

Tools

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Pub/Sub

GCP

AWS

Job description

AfterQuery — Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure/Platform

Type: Full-time | On-site | San Francisco, CA Compensation: $250,000–$350,000 + competitive equity Hiring count: 2 Visa sponsorship: None available Reports to: TBD (screening interviewers named: Alec, Carlos)

The Role

Design and build the core infrastructure powering AfterQuery's data generation, evaluation, and agentic systems — the shared platforms that let engineers and researchers run large-scale human-in-the-loop workflows, evaluation harnesses, and automated data pipelines used to train frontier AI models. A highly technical role with broad ownership, working directly with the founding team.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Architect and develop the shared infrastructure powering data generation platforms, human-in-the-loop systems, and evaluation pipelines
• Build systems capable of processing large-scale datasets and high-throughput workloads with strong reliability guarantees
• Create reusable infrastructure and APIs that let product engineers and researchers build quickly and reliably on top of core systems
• Design systems with strong observability, monitoring, and fault tolerance for production workloads at scale
• Help define long‑term system architecture across data pipelines, compute infrastructure, task orchestration, and storage systems
• Work closely with engineers and researchers to support new AI experimentation workflows and platform capabilities
• Define standards for system design, deployment, reliability, and infrastructure operations

Tech stack: Python and/or JavaScript (Node.js/Next.js); GCP or AWS; message queues / event‑driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Pub/Sub)

Requirements

• 5+ years building and owning production distributed systems or platform infrastructure
• Strong backend proficiency in Python and/or JavaScript (Node.js/Next.js)
• Cloud infrastructure experience in GCP or AWS
• Message queues and event‑driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Pub/Sub)
• High‑throughput data pipelines and asynchronous processing
• System scalability, performance, and reliability ownership
• Shared infrastructure, APIs, and internal platform development
• Observability, monitoring, and fault tolerance design
• Long‑term architecture ownership across data pipelines, compute, and storage
• Cross‑functional collaboration with engineering and research teams
• Undergraduate degree from the U.S., Canada, or the U.K.

Green Flags

• Background at FAANG, Jane Street, Citadel, Stripe, Ramp, or top‑tier YC company
• Has architected and owned production infrastructure end‑to‑end at scale
• Experience building internal developer platforms or shared infrastructure at senior level
• Experience with AI infrastructure, LLM evaluation systems, or ML pipelines
• Has scaled early infrastructure at a high‑growth startup
• Experience designing human‑in‑the‑loop or workflow orchestration systems
• Defined architecture decisions and set engineering standards, not just executed them

Red Flags

• Only mid‑level or IC contributor experience with no architectural ownership
• Background exclusively at large legacy enterprises or slow‑moving companies
• Has never owned a production system end‑to‑end
• No cloud infrastructure depth in GCP or AWS
• No experience with high‑throughput or distributed systems
• Under 5 years of experience

Role Details

Salary $250,000–$350,000 Equity Competitive / meaningful (Series A) On‑site policy On‑site, San Francisco Visa sponsorship None available Employment type Full‑time Location San Francisco, CA Hiring count 2

Screening Questions

• None provided on the role page.