Lead Platform Engineer - Applied AI & Data Infrastructure

Acceler8 Talent; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 260,000 - 290,000; Full time

Job summary

Acceler8 Talent is seeking a Software Engineer – Platform / Applied AI in San Francisco to build core data infrastructure for frontier AI labs. You will own end-to-end architecture, ship critical systems, and work directly with the founding team to define technical direction.

The role emphasizes high ownership, scalable Python backend, and cloud infrastructure in a fast-moving startup environment with equity and significant upside.

Qualifications

• Experience in backend, platform or infrastructure engineering.
• Strong Python experience, ideally full-stack capability.
• Experience building scalable production systems or high-throughput data infrastructure.
• Strong cloud and distributed systems fundamentals.
• Evidence of owning and shipping substantial systems to production.
• High agency and comfort in fast-moving, low-process environments.
• Exceptional academic and technical pedigree; top CS backgrounds preferred.
• Experience in AI infrastructure, LLM evaluation, or applied AI is highly valuable.

Responsibilities

• Architecting and scaling high-throughput data pipelines.
• Building complex data-capture workflows across web and desktop.
• Designing backend and platform infrastructure in Python.
• Working with distributed systems, queues, caching and search infrastructure.
• Building production systems across cloud environments.
• Owning projects end-to-end from architecture through deployment.
• Working directly with the founding team to define technical direction and ship quickly.

Skills

Backend engineering

Platform engineering

Python

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Production systems

Data pipelines

Ownership and shipping

Education

Top CS background

Tools

Kubernetes

Redis

Kafka

Job description

Acceler8 Talent is seeking a Software Engineer – Platform / Applied AI in San Francisco to build core data infrastructure for frontier AI labs. You will own end-to-end architecture, ship critical systems, and work directly with the founding team to define technical direction.

The role emphasizes high ownership, scalable Python backend, and cloud infrastructure in a fast-moving startup environment with equity and significant upside.