Senior Backend Platform Engineer - AI-Driven SaaS

Instrumental Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 221,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision and dental

Commuter plans

Parental leave

Job summary

Instrumental Inc. in Palo Alto is seeking a Backend/Platform Engineer to own core platform services end-to-end.

You’ll design, build, deploy, and operate systems that scale with the business, partnering with product, AI, and edge teams to raise the bar on how we ship. You’ll push back on non-scalable designs, move fast with care, and craft a platform that remains trusted and maintainable as we grow, with a strong emphasis on observability and incident response.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a software engineer with ownership of production systems
• Fluency in Python or Go with strong data modeling and system design instincts
• Experience building SaaS or multi-tenant systems with good product judgment
• Proven track record solving hard, ambiguous engineering problems and owning outcomes
• Fluency with AI-assisted development as a default approach and ability to bring others along

Responsibilities

• Own the core platform services lifecycle: design, build, deploy, operate
• Push back on designs that won't scale and ensure long-term maintainability
• Move fast without causing friction; make architectural calls and keep teams aligned
• Build the platform progressively with better tooling, observability, and incident response

Skills

Python

Go

Data modeling

System design

Multi-tenant SaaS

Ownership of production systems

AI-assisted development

Startup experience

Job description

Instrumental Inc. in Palo Alto is seeking a Backend/Platform Engineer to own core platform services end-to-end.

You’ll design, build, deploy, and operate systems that scale with the business, partnering with product, AI, and edge teams to raise the bar on how we ship. You’ll push back on non-scalable designs, move fast with care, and craft a platform that remains trusted and maintainable as we grow, with a strong emphasis on observability and incident response.