Backend Developer

Zof AI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

MacBook Pro

Premium AI development tools

Cursor Ultra

Claude Code Ultra

OpenAI Codex Max

Job summary

Zof AI, Inc. in San Francisco, CA is seeking a Backend Developer to own the services, APIs, and data layer that our agent fleets run on.

This full-time role focuses on job orchestration, queueing, and reliable data storage for evidence and validation artifacts in production. The ideal candidate writes clear, well-tested services, reason about failure and state, and balances throughput, correctness, and cost in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Experience building and shipping backend services in production.
• Strong software engineering foundation.
• Working knowledge of relational databases and SQL, ideally Postgres.
• Familiarity with APIs, queues, and asynchronous job processing.
• Ability to debug performance and correctness issues in running systems.
• Habit of proving your work with tests and evidence before it ships.
• Clear written and verbal communication.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the services and APIs our agent fleets run on.
• Build the job orchestration and queueing that keeps long-running agent work moving.
• Own Postgres schema design, migrations, and query performance as data grows.
• Ship the storage and retrieval paths for the evidence and traces every agent run produces.
• Instrument services so failures are observable, debuggable, and recoverable.
• Harden reliability with testing, retries, idempotency, and backpressure under real load.
• Partner with product and AI engineers to turn agent behavior into stable interfaces.
• Own backend systems from design through production.

Skills

Backend development

Software engineering fundamentals

Testing & validation

Debugging performance

Clear communication

Adapting to fast-moving environment

Tools

PostgreSQL

APIs

Queues & async processing

TypeScript

Node.js

Python

Job description

Compensation

Competitive salary

Plus meaningful equity

Location & Status

San Francisco, CA

Full-time

Mid-level

On-site

About This Role

Zof AI is hiring for this role in San Francisco, CA. This is a full-time opportunity for candidates who want to contribute directly to the development of ambitious AI products in a high-performance environment. Daily hands-on use of AI coding agents to design, build, and debug backend systems is required. Zof AI is seeking a Backend Developer to own the services, APIs, and data layer that our agent fleets run on. This role covers job orchestration and queueing for long-running agent runs, Postgres schema and query performance, and the storage paths for the evidence and validation artifacts every fix we ship depends on. If you have worked as a Backend Software Engineer, API Engineer, Platform Engineer, or Distributed Systems Engineer, this is that discipline at Zof AI. The ideal candidate writes clear, well-tested services, reasons carefully about failure and state, and treats throughput, correctness, and cost as everyday engineering constraints.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the services and APIs our agent fleets run on.
• Build the job orchestration and queueing that keeps long-running agent work moving.
• Own Postgres schema design, migrations, and query performance as data grows.
• Ship the storage and retrieval paths for the evidence and traces every agent run produces.
• Instrument services so failures are observable, debuggable, and recoverable.
• Harden reliability with testing, retries, idempotency, and backpressure under real load.
• Partner with product and AI engineers to turn agent behavior into stable interfaces.
• Own backend systems from design through production.

Requirements

• Experience building and shipping backend services in production.
• Strong software engineering foundation.
• Working knowledge of relational databases and SQL, ideally Postgres.
• Familiarity with APIs, queues, and asynchronous job processing.
• Ability to debug performance and correctness issues in running systems.
• Habit of proving your work with tests and evidence before it ships.
• Clear written and verbal communication.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment.

Nice to have

• Experience with TypeScript, Node.js, Python, Postgres, or similar technologies.
• Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architecture, or streaming pipelines.
• Experience with cloud platforms, containers, and CI/CD.
• Experience supporting AI or agent workloads in production.

What we provide in San Francisco

• MacBook Pro
• Premium AI development tools
• Cursor Ultra
• Claude Code Ultra
• OpenAI Codex Max or equivalent advanced AI tooling
• Access to a high-performance AI product environment
• Close collaboration with leadership, engineering, and customers
• Opportunity to work in the San Francisco AI ecosystem
• Wellness and productivity support where applicable
• Competitive startup environment
• High ownership
• Direct product impact

Benefits may depend on role and final offer terms.

Tags

Backend Engineering, APIs, Distributed Systems, Postgres, Reliability