Senior Backend Engineer — AI Training & Experimentation

Lightning; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive Health Coverage

Meaningful Equity

401(k) matching

Flexible Time Off

Sabbatical Program

Hybrid Work Model

In-Office Meals

Wellness Benefits

Job summary

Lightning AI is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for Training & Experimentation to design and scale backend systems that accelerate AI development. You will work across distributed training infrastructure, workload orchestration, and platform APIs while collaborating with multiple teams.

This role is based in one of our office hubs (San Francisco, NYC, or London) with at least two in-office days weekly and no visa sponsorship. Salary ranges reflect US market norms.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building scalable backend systems.
• Experience designing and operating production services at scale.
• Hands-on experience building backend platforms, developer tools, or infrastructure products.
• Strong communication and collaboration across engineering, product, research, and design.
• Thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous environments while balancing technical excellence with product impact.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services powering AI agent orchestration and execution.
• Develop scalable APIs and platform capabilities for tool usage and workflow orchestration.
• Build reliable infrastructure for long-running, distributed AI workflows.
• Partner with product, research, and platform engineering teams to deploy new agent capabilities.
• Improve platform reliability, observability, and performance as workloads scale.
• Evaluate and strengthen architecture, processes, and tooling.
• Maintain high software quality via testing, automation, and continuous delivery.
• Mentor engineers on system design and backend best practices.

Skills

Go

Python

Rust

Distributed systems

APIs

Cloud-native architecture

Ownership mindset

Automated testing

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Lightning AI is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for Training & Experimentation to design and scale backend systems that accelerate AI development. You will work across distributed training infrastructure, workload orchestration, and platform APIs while collaborating with multiple teams.

This role is based in one of our office hubs (San Francisco, NYC, or London) with at least two in-office days weekly and no visa sponsorship. Salary ranges reflect US market norms.