Backend Engineer

David Joseph & Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

David Joseph & Company, a lean, venture-backed startup building an AI-driven revenue platform for D2C brands, seeks a Backend Engineer with a data-engineering focus in San Francisco. You will own pipelines for data enrichment, normalization, and ingestion while building the platform infrastructure that does not yet exist.

You will work directly with a co-founder on a small team to ship end-to-end features. You should be fluent in AI coding tools as a daily practice, possess strong systems

Qualifications

• Strong proficiency in using AI coding tools as a core part of daily development.
• Solid systems engineering fundamentals and data-layer design.
• Demonstrated startup experience with genuine ownership of what was built.
• Comfortable with a high-intensity pace: 5-6 days a week.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain data enrichment, normalization, and ingestion pipelines.
• Develop feature engineering and platform infrastructure, including observability and workflow tooling.
• Work extensively with AI coding tools as a core part of daily development.
• Translate customer feedback and requirements into shipped features, sometimes from meeting summaries.
• Contribute independently to systems and data-layer design decisions.

Skills

AI coding tools

Systems engineering

Startup experience

Fast-paced environment

Tools

TypeScript

Job description

About the Company

An early-stage, venture-backed startup building an AI revenue platform for D2C brands, with a heavy e-commerce focus and integrations into major commerce platforms (e.g. Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce). The company is past MVP with live customers, showing strong early traction with brands representing tens of millions in GMV, and is now building out its platform infrastructure from the ground up. Founded and run by two technical co-founders who still code daily.

Founded 2026 • fewer than 10 people • Industry: eCommerce, D2C, AI

The Role

Backend Engineer with a data-engineering lean, building the data enrichment, normalization, and ingestion pipelines that power the platform, plus the platform infrastructure and tooling that doesn't yet exist. You'll report directly to a co-founder on a small engineering team.

What you'll be doing

• Build and maintain data enrichment, normalization, and ingestion pipelines
• Build feature engineering and platform infrastructure, including observability and workflow tooling that doesn't yet exist
• Work extensively with AI coding tools as a core part of daily development, not an occasional aid
• Translate customer feedback and requirements directly into shipped features, sometimes working from a meeting summary rather than a formal spec
• Contribute independently to systems and data-layer design decisions

Tech stack: TypeScript on Fly.io (recently adopted; adaptability valued over deep stack-specific experience)

Requirements

• Strong proficiency in using AI coding tools as a primary part of the development workflow (top priority)
• Solid systems engineering fundamentals: understands how features work end-to-end and how to build data layers
• Demonstrated startup experience with genuine ownership of what was built
• Comfortable with high‑intensity pace: 5-6 days a week
• Experience: 0–2 years

Green Flags

• Fluent, heavy use of AI coding tools as a core part of daily development
• Genuine startup ownership: built and was responsible for real systems, not just features on a larger team
• Comfortable working from ambiguous input, such as a customer meeting summary, and independently shaping the solution
• E-commerce, D2C, or platform integration domain exposure
• Track record suggesting the ability to eventually hire and lead a small team

Red Flags

• Career built entirely at large enterprise or post-Series D companies with heavily defined processes
• Relies on manual coding without meaningful AI tool fluency
• Cannot demonstrate genuine ownership of what was built in past roles
• Short tenure pattern without a legitimate explanation (contract-based roles ending due to funding changes are understood and not held against a candidate)

Why Join

• Ground-floor ownership: platform infrastructure, feature engineering, workflows, and observability tooling don't exist yet — you build them from scratch
• Real early traction and comfortable runway, with aggressive growth projected over the next year
• AI-native by default: heavy AI-tool development is the expected way of working, not a novelty
• Work directly with technical co-founders who still code daily

Details

• Location: San Francisco, CA
• Work policy: On-site — 5-6 days a week
• Compensation: $120,000–$150,000 + equity
• Visa sponsorship: None available
• Employment type: Full-time