Senior Backend Architect – Real-Time AI, Equity

Sarah Smith Fund; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity in startup

Comprehensive health benefits

Monthly stipends

Company retreats

Collaborative office culture

Job summary

Pika is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Backend, to lead and scale backend infrastructure powering real-time collaboration and AI-powered workflows. You will own architecture, design, and delivery of robust systems used by millions of users.

You will collaborate with engineering, product, and design teams to ship reliable, high-performance backend features while mentoring others and shaping technical direction for the core platforms.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience, with at least 2+ years in senior backend roles.
• Deep expertise in building distributed systems, RESTful and real-time APIs, and cloud-native infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes).
• Strong system design skills for reliable, scalable backend services for high-traffic applications.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop scalable, high-performing backend systems and APIs powering all products and services.
• Build, maintain, and enhance distributed systems and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), ensuring high availability and reliability.
• Take ownership of backend features and platforms from ideation through launch and iteration.
• Develop systems to support low-latency, real-time collaboration and messaging at scale.
• Design and optimize backend features that power AI-driven product capabilities.
• Lead technical discussions, review code, drive architecture proposals, and mentor engineers to elevate standards.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

RESTful APIs

Real-time APIs

Cloud-native infra

Leadership

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Docker

PostgreSQL

Redis

Go

Python

Node.js

Job description

Pika is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Backend, to lead and scale backend infrastructure powering real-time collaboration and AI-powered workflows. You will own architecture, design, and delivery of robust systems used by millions of users.

You will collaborate with engineering, product, and design teams to ship reliable, high-performance backend features while mentoring others and shaping technical direction for the core platforms.