Senior Backend Engineer

Chai AI; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 477,000 - 652,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health

401k

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

CHAI AI in Palo Alto is seeking a software engineer to help build and scale services that sit between 10 million users and our vast model fleet. You will own routing, conversation state, and queuing with a focus on high throughput and low latency.

The role requires 2+ years of software engineering experience, strong ownership, and the ability to work in person at our Palo Alto office. You will join a flat, fast-moving team and be measured by clear product metrics.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of software engineering experience.
• High motivation and talented.
• High ownership: comfortable with ambiguity, able to define the problem and the plan rather than execute a predefined spec.
• Able to work in person at our Palo Alto Office.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale services between 10M users and our model fleet – routing, conversation state, queuing.
• Own end-to-end delivery with high volume, low latency, low error rate.

Skills

Software engineering

Ownership

Ambiguity management

In-person collaboration

Job description

CHAI is a social AI platform where millions of people create, share, and talk to AI characters. As of Sep 2026, it has 10 million active users and $100 million ARR. After receiving over $55M in funding from investors such as AMD and CoreWeave, CHAI AI is actively hiring engineers to expand its team.

About the team

Engineering is 15-20 people with a flat structure. High impact on the product, fast iteration, and clear metrics to measure against.

What you will work on

Build and scale the services between 10M users and our model fleet - routing, conversation state, queuing. High volume, low latency, low error rate. You own it end to end.

You might thrive in this role if you...

• 2+ years of software engineering experience
• High motivation and talented.
• High ownership: comfortable with ambiguity, able to define the problem and the plan rather than execute a predefined spec.
• Able to work in person at our Palo Alto Office.

Compensation and benefits

Top pay AI startup in Bay Area. $477,000 - $652,000, paid 100% in cash.

We benchmark against total comp at Meta, Google, and OpenAI - and pay that number in cash, not equity, with the option to trade a portion of cash for stock options.

Health, 401k, unlimited PTO.

We run a fast process - an offer can be given within 7 days of first contact.

• 20 minute phone screen with our founder or engineer
• 20 minute personality assessment
• Take home assessment. 60-90 minutes to complete.