Member of Technical Staff, Rust Agent Runtime

Slope; New York (NY); On-site; USD 175,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Profound in NYC is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to own the real-time, distributed runtime and backend services for their agent orchestration platform. You will design Rust-first services, drive scalability, and ship durable workflows end-to-end for production workloads.

We value strong systems design, PostgreSQL, Redis, streaming, and multi-tenant architectures. On-site in NYC, visa sponsorship available for qualified international candidates.

Qualifications

• Strong portfolio or GitHub showing backend or systems design depth.
• Proficient in Rust and comfortable owning services end-to-end in production.
• Solid with SQL and relational data modeling, with hands-on experience using PostgreSQL.
• Experience with distributed systems patterns including messaging or streaming, retries, idempotency, and backpressure.
• Familiar with caching and state systems such as Redis and real-time delivery using SSE or WebSockets.
• Strong grasp of API authentication and authorization, multi-tenancy, and security best practices.
• Pragmatic, collaborative, and product-minded, thriving in a fast, in-person environment.
• Experience building or operating workflow engines, schedulers, or agent runtimes.
• Experience with Postgres RLS and data governance at scale.
• Practical exposure to containerization, CI or CD, and cloud environments.
• Background integrating external AI or model providers and securing provider configurations.
• Experience working with Rust 2024, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka or NATS, containers, modern CI or CD, and real-time streaming to clients.

Responsibilities

• Build core workflow engine primitives used to orchestrate agents, tools, and dataflows
• Own the real-time control plane, including streaming events, reliable job orchestration, idempotency, and replay
• Ship high-leverage systems that turn prototypes into production-grade, scalable workflows
• Design and ship Rust-first backend services and clean APIs for creating, executing, and supervising graph or DAG workflows
• Build reliable job orchestration with multiple response modes, including blocking, streaming, and fire-and-forget, with durable state
• Strengthen tenant isolation, security, and access patterns across the platform
• Improve runtime behavior including scheduling, backpressure, timeouts, retries, and idempotency
• Evolve schemas and repositories and own migrations, indexing, and query performance
• Instrument with meaningful telemetry and raise the bar on testing and operational excellence
• Partner closely with product, frontend, and data teams to deliver high-impact features

Skills

Rust

Distributed systems

PostgreSQL

Caching (Redis)

Streaming

API authentication

Multi-tenancy

Containerization

CI/CD

Cloud environments

Workflow engines

Tools

PostgreSQL

Redis

Kafka/NATS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Profound is the marketing platform for the age of AI search. The way brands reach people is being rewritten — AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode are now the answer layer between companies and their customers. We built the platform marketers use to understand, measure, and win in that world: the analytics, intelligence, and agent automation that turn AI search from a threat into a competitive advantage.

We went from 0 to a $1B valuation in 18 months. Revenue grew 100x last year. Our customers include 15% of the Fortune 500 like Walmart, Wayfair and U.S. Bank, and innovators like Ramp, MongoDB, and Figma. We are backed by Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, LSVP, and Khosla Ventures — and we are moving fast enough that the people joining now are building the playbook everyone who comes after them will run.

Profound is building the foundational agentic layer for modern companies. Our Agent Runtime is the execution backbone that turns complex AI work into reliable, composable workflows. You will shape the core primitives, execution, scheduling, state, and streaming, that power intelligent systems at scale.

What you’ll do

• Build core workflow engine primitives used to orchestrate agents, tools, and dataflows

• Own the real-time control plane, including streaming events, reliable job orchestration, idempotency, and replay

• Ship high-leverage systems that turn prototypes into production-grade, scalable workflows

• Design and ship Rust-first backend services and clean APIs for creating, executing, and supervising graph or DAG workflows

• Build reliable job orchestration with multiple response modes, including blocking, streaming, and fire-and-forget, with durable state

• Strengthen tenant isolation, security, and access patterns across the platform

• Improve runtime behavior including scheduling, backpressure, timeouts, retries, and idempotency

• Evolve schemas and repositories and own migrations, indexing, and query performance

• Instrument with meaningful telemetry and raise the bar on testing and operational excellence

• Partner closely with product, frontend, and data teams to deliver high-impact features

Who you are

• Strong portfolio or GitHub showing backend or systems design depth

• Proficient in Rust and comfortable owning services end-to-end in production

• Solid with SQL and relational data modeling, with hands-on experience using PostgreSQL

• Experience with distributed systems patterns including messaging or streaming, retries, idempotency, and backpressure

• Familiar with caching and state systems such as Redis and real-time delivery using SSE or WebSockets

• Strong grasp of API authentication and authorization, multi-tenancy, and security best practices

• Pragmatic, collaborative, and product-minded, thriving in a fast, in-person environment

• Experience building or operating workflow engines, schedulers, or agent runtimes

• Experience with Postgres RLS and data governance at scale

• Practical exposure to containerization, CI or CD, and cloud environments

• Background integrating external AI or model providers and securing provider configurations

• Experience working with Rust 2024, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka or NATS, containers, modern CI or CD, and real-time streaming to clients

Location

This is an on-site role based in our NYC office, designed for builders who thrive on speed, iteration, and meaningful impact. We are happy to support visa sponsorship for qualified international candidates.

For this role, the expected base salary range is $175,000 to $260,000. Comp may vary by location. Profound’s total compensation package is designed to be competitive and includes base salary, equity, and a full range of benefits and perks. Final compensation will depend on factors such as your skills, experience, qualifications, and location, and will be determined during the interview process. Our recruiting team will share more details about the full compensation package and benefits as you move through hiring.

Note: All official communication from Profound will come from a @tryprofound.com email address. If you're contacted by anyone using a different domain, please disregard and report it as spam.