Senior Backend Engineer

Phonely, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company-paid meals

Team activities like runs and hikes

Quarterly retreats to various locations

Job summary

A voice AI technology company in San Francisco is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to build and maintain Python-based systems that drive voice interactions. The successful candidate will work closely with engineering, customer support, and product teams. A minimum of 5 years of experience in Python programming and familiarity with AWS and Kubernetes is essential. This role requires on-site presence in San Francisco and offers a dynamic, rewarding environment focused on innovation and team collaboration.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience writing Python.
• Experience with async programming and testing frameworks.
• Strong technical and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain Python-based state systems.
• Integrate multiple LLM providers.
• Write clean, maintainable Python code.
• Implement metrics, logging, and alerting.

Skills

Python programming

Asynchronous web applications

Understanding of LLMs

CI/CD pipelines

AWS

Kubernetes

Technical communication

Tools

FastAPI

Firebase

Supabase

Datadog

Redis

Job description

Senior Backend Engineer (Python)

At some point in the future, every business will answer their phone with voice AI. We are making sure that when they build that AI agent, the experience of doing so doesn’t suck.

We’re growing incredibly fast and need someone who thrives in a dynamic, high‑pressure environment to work in our engineering. This role is critical to the success of our company. We’re looking for someone who rolls up their sleeves and digs in, double–down when things get tough.

We’re looking for someone who is highly technical, driven, and fun to work with. You’ll be working directly with our engineers, customer support team, and product team.

NOTE: This is an engineering position. You will be writing code, a lot of it, and it will be a lot of work… if you’re looking for a cushy corporate job where nothing gets done, I recommend checking out some of our competitors. If you’re looking to be a part of a winning team and to make a real difference read on. This role is in office 5 days a week in San Francisco.

Your day to day:

• Build and maintain Python‑based state systems that drive what the voice AI says and does across complex, real‑time conversations.

• Integrate and orchestrate multiple LLM providers, including prompt design, tool / function calling, routing, and fallbacks.

• Write clean, maintainable, high‑performance Python code, leveraging asyncio, OOP, and best practices.

• Write automated tests and validation suites to ensure correctness, resilience, and safe iteration of agent logic and state transitions.

• Monitor production systems, debug agent behavior, and continuously improve reliability and conversation quality.

• Implement comprehensive metrics, logging, and alerting to validate correctness, detect failures early, and maintain extremely high availability.

• Design database schemas, optimize queries, and operate both SQL and NoSQL databases in production.

• Build and operate authentication and authorization mechanisms with strong security guarantees.

• Design and build microservices‑based architectures.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years writing Python, experience writing async web apps using FastAPI, testing frameworks.

• Understanding of LLMs, APIs, Cloud, CI/CD pipelines.

• Comfortable with understanding technical specifications.

• Understanding of good architecture and security practices.

• Strong technical and communication skills.

• Experience with AWS & Kubernetes.

Our Software Stack:

• Backend: Python, microservices, async programming.

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Redis.

• Databases: Firebase, Supabase.

• Frontend: Next.js.

• Observability & Monitoring: Datadog, logging, metrics, tracing.

• Telephony & Voice AI: SIP, voice APIs, real‑time call handling.

• Other tools & practices: CI/CD, automated testing, resilient architecture.

Why Join Phonely?

We’re super cool. Our team is a group of ex‑athletes, founders, and builders with low egos, and a high belief that life is not about taking the easy road but challenging ourselves to find the most we can be. Working at Phonely feels like family: we eat most meals together as a team (the company pays for food), we go on runs, hikes, and surf together when we’re not working, and we rent out Airbnbs in cool places (Rocky Mountains, Costa Rica, Indonesia) four times a year so you can still see the world while on the grind.

From a product and direction standpoint, we are customer‑obsessed and focused on building a product that we ourselves would love to use. We are solving voice AI problems that have never been solved before with a mission to build something that 1M+ businesses love. If you made it to this part of the JD, please message me (Aidan) with an item from your bucket list and something impressive you’ve done.

Working at Phonely, you’ll have the flexibility to contribute to all aspects of the business. It will be hard, but it will be rewarding. We are extremely picky with who we bring on as full time employees. While resume’s and experience are important, the MOST important thing is that we believe in you, like you and are inspired to work around you. If we do, we will bend over backwards to make sure that the hard work you put in here will return dividends later.

We look forward to you applying.