Founding Backend Engineer - Phaselaw

Praxis, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Phaselaw, a seed-stage legal tech startup, is seeking a founding Backend Engineer to help build and scale the core product. You’ll work closely with the founders and the engineering team to ship features and improve performance across databases, data ingestion, and AI systems.

This high-ownership role offers significant impact and equity in a fast-moving environment. We value strong Python backend skills, database expertise (PostgreSQL/Elasticsearch), and modern infra tooling (Terraform,

Qualifications

• 3+ years of backend development experience.
• Strong Python backend development skills.
• Experience with Postgres and Elasticsearch.
• Familiarity with Terraform, Kubernetes and CI/CD workflows.
• Bias for action and ownership.
• Strong product sense and user experience focus.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale Phaselaw's core backend systems from databases to data ingestion and AI components.
• Ship features and improve performance with high ownership.
• Collaborate with founders and engineering team.
• Ensure reliable, scalable infrastructure.

Skills

Backend development

Python

3+ years experience

Tools

Python

PostgreSQL

Elasticsearch

Terraform

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Job description

Founding Backend Engineer – Phaselaw

Location: New York City or Raleigh/Durham Area

Type: Full-time

Salary: Competitive, with equity options

About Phaselaw

Phaselaw is rebuilding the legacy eDiscovery industry from the ground up, empowering in-house legal teams with tools for document production that bypass the existing services-heavy approach. We're Seed stage but are already working with Fortune 500 companies and are scaling rapidly.

The Role

We’re looking for a Backend Engineer to help us build and scale our core product. You'll work closely with our Founders and Engineering team to ship features and improve performance across backend systems -- from databases to data ingestion to AI systems. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role where you’ll directly shape the future of Phaselaw’s technology.

What You’ll Do

First Week

• Get onboarded, set up your dev environment, and dive into our systems.
• Ship a small update or bug fix to get familiar with the codebase.
• Use the product to understand how it works and identify areas for improvement.

First Month

• Ship two major features

By 90 Days

• Ship features updates daily/weekly with a strong focus on quality.
• Collaborate closely with the team and customers to shape the future of the product.

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years of experience in backend development, ideally with startups or fast-moving teams.
• Strong expertise in Python for backend development.
• Strong database expertise, including Postgres and/or Elasticsearch.
• Experience with modern infrastructure management, including Terraform, Kubernetes, and CI/CD.
• A bias for action: You ship fast and iterate based on feedback.
• Strong product sense: You think beyond the code and care about delivering an exceptional user experience.
• Extreme ownership: You're excited to make a mark and you make sure balls don't get dropped.

Why Join Us?

• Impact: Your work will directly shape the product and the future of the company.
• Growth: High ownership, deep collaboration with company and technical leadership.
• Speed: We move fast, ship often, and value autonomy.
• Culture: Our team is kind, collaborative, inquisitive, and inclusive – and we want to keep it that way. We have high standards for quality and ethics, and help each other learn in order to reach our objectives. We think technology is best built by teams with a diversity of background, thought, and experience.

Every team member is a human first, and we strive to create a culture and environment that supports your career goals and respects all of the hats you wear in life, not just the ones that earn you a paycheck.

Our Team

We were founded in 2023 by SaaS and data experts: Josh (CEO) lead Chartbeat as CTO to $70M+ ARR and exit; David (CTO) lead Cortico (MIT spinoff) from 0->1 as COO.

Let’s build together!