Forward Engineer

Metis, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 450,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full medical, dental, and vision

Wellness & L&D stipend

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided (Unlimited Doordash)

$25,000 housing stipend

Job summary

Metis, Inc. is seeking a Forward Engineer to join their product-driven team in San Francisco, California. As a Forward Engineer, you will translate research prototypes into reliable production systems and collaborate with various teams to deliver high-performance AI products. The ideal candidate has strong programming skills, experience with backend systems, and excellent communication abilities.

This position offers a competitive salary and benefits, including full medical coverage and generous stipends for housing and wellness. Join us to push the boundaries of applied AI engineering!

Qualifications

• Strong fundamentals in at least one modern language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.).
• Experience with backend systems, distributed computing, or high-volume services.
• Strong communication abilities with a high bar for customer interaction.
• Ability to turn ambiguous product asks into simple, pragmatic solutions.
• Familiarity with system design, software engineering best practices.
• Comfortable working across the stack from APIs to user-facing surfaces.

Responsibilities

• Translate research prototypes into production systems.
• Collaborate with teams to ship features under real customer constraints.
• Write clean, testable code in modern languages.
• Debug complex systems, identify bottlenecks, and drive improvements.

Skills

Strong fundamentals in modern programming languages (Python, Go, Rust, etc.)

Experience with backend systems, distributed computing, or high-volume services

Strong communication abilities

Ability to turn ambiguous product asks into simple solutions

Familiarity with system design and software engineering practices

Comfortable working across the stack

Job description

As a Forward Engineer at Metis, you’ll be part of a tight-knit, product-driven team leveraging our training platform to deliver outcomes for customers. You’ll work across the stack, from low-level systems to user-facing features, to deliver resilient, high-performance products that power mission‑critical AI workflows. You’ll own projects end-to-end, collaborate deeply with platform, research, and customers to make pragmatic technical decisions that tie directly to customer outcomes.

We move fast, but we hold a very high bar for correctness, maintainability, and simplicity. You’ll be expected to write production‑grade code, reason holistically about systems, and push the boundaries of what’s possible in applied AI engineering.

What You’ll Do

• Translate research prototypes into production systems that enterprises and labs can reliably adopt
• Collaborate with platform, product and research teams to ship features under real customer constraints
• Write clean, testable code in modern languages while leveraging AI tools to accelerate development
• Debug complex systems, identify bottlenecks, and drive performance, security, and reliability improvements

Requirements

• Strong fundamentals in at least one modern language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.)
• Experience with backend systems, distributed computing, or high-volume services
• Strong communication abilities with a high bar for customer interaction
• Ability to turn ambiguous product asks into simple, pragmatic solutions
• Familiarity with system design, software engineering best practices, and debugging in production environments
• Comfortable working across the stack — from APIs and orchestration to user‑facing surfaces
• Base: $150,000–$450,000
• Full medical, dental, and vision
• Wellness & L&D stipend
• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided (Unlimited Doordash)
• $25,000 housing stipend

About Metis

Metis helps enterprises and labs build the most reliable AI agents by leveraging post‑training. Our platform enables the creation, improvement, and deployment of the most capable frontier agents designed for rigorous, real‑world workflows.

Momentum

• 0 → six‑figure monthly revenue in the last six weeks
• Working with several Fortune 500 enterprises & frontier AI labs
• Growing 150%+ MoM

Backed by

Y Combinator, CRV, and executives from OpenAI, Google, Mercor, NVIDIA, and others.

As set forth in Metis, Inc.’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.