Senior Backend Engineer (Go/Python/Rust) for AI Tools

Staffing Science; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Staffing Science is building AI-native products with coding agents, an internal AI app store, and RAG-powered tooling. Bay Area strongly preferred, open to remote across the US.

You’ll join a fast-moving engineering org valuing production-grade code and strong fundamentals. You will design and ship features across infrastructure and app layers, work hands-on with coding agents as your default workflow, and build internal AI tooling like harnesses, MCP servers, memory systems, and evaluation

Qualifications

• Strong backend/infra engineering fundamentals in Go, Python, or Rust.
• Experience at both large companies and startups.
• Hands-on experience with agentic coding tools in production.
• Open source contributions to projects you use daily.
• Exposure to software supply chain, build systems, or secure-by-construction tooling.
• Direct experience on an AI-focused team (RAG or coding agents) is a plus.
• DevOps experience is a nice-to-have.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship features across infrastructure and application layers for AI-native products.
• Work hands-on with coding agents as your default development workflow.
• Build and improve internal AI tooling: agent harnesses, MCP servers, memory systems, and evaluation frameworks.
• Contribute to RAG systems and other applied AI product work.
• Engage with our open source ecosystem and contribute to supported projects.
• Collaborate on security-adjacent surfaces with a focus on supply chain and secure-by-construction principles.
• Work in a small, senior pod where you own outcomes.

Skills

Backend/Infra

Go/Python/Rust

Open Source

Startup experience

Agentic tooling

Tools

MCP server

agent harness

evaluation frameworks

memory systems

Job description

Location: Bay Area strongly preferred | Open to remote across the US

About the Role

We're hiring for a fast-moving engineering org building AI-native products — think coding agents, an internal AI app store, and RAG-powered tooling that the team ships and uses on itself. We're also active in the open source community and have a meaningful security-focused product line, so this is a team that thinks about software supply chain, provenance, and secure-by-construction tooling as much as it thinks about AI. You'll work inside a small, senior team of engineers who treat AI tooling as a core part of how they build, not a side experiment.

This isn't a "dabbled with ChatGPT" role, and it isn't a role for someone light on fundamentals either. We need real engineering chops first — someone who can reason about complex systems, ship production-grade code, and make sound architectural calls — and layered on top of that, someone who lives in an agentic coding workflow daily and has probably already built something — a harness, a custom MCP server, an eval framework — to make these tools work better for a team, not just for themselves.

What You'll Do

• Design and ship features across infrastructure and application layers for AI-native products
• Work hands-on with coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or similar) as your default development workflow — not an occasional assist
• Build and improve internal AI tooling: agent harnesses, MCP servers, memory systems, and evaluation frameworks the whole team relies on
• Contribute to RAG systems and other applied AI product work
• Engage with our open source ecosystem — contribute to, maintain, or build on the projects we support and rely on
• Work on security-adjacent product surfaces where software supply chain, provenance, and secure-by-construction principles are core to the design, not an afterthought
• Collaborate closely with a small, senior, no-manager pod — you'll own outcomes, not just tickets
• Represent the team at industry events (AWS re:Invent, KubeCon, and similar) as we grow our presence in the community

What We're Looking For

• Strong backend/infra engineering fundamentals in Go, Python, or Rust — this comes first, before anything AI-related. We need someone who can architect, debug, and ship production systems, full stop
• A mix of large-company and startup experience — you've seen how things work at scale and how they work when you're building from scratch. Very open to people only who've been in the startup world though!
• Real, hands-on experience with agentic coding tools in production — bonus points if you've built your own harness, custom skill/rules setup, or MCP server
• Open source contributions — either maintaining your own projects or meaningful contributions to tools you use daily
• Any exposure to software supply chain, package management, build systems, or secure-by-construction tooling is a strong plus given our security-focused product line
• Ideally, direct experience on an AI-focused team: RAG, coding agents, internal AI tooling, or similar applied AI product work
• DevOps experience is a nice-to-have, not a requirement