Senior Founding Software Engineer

Arbor AI, Inc; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Arbor AI in Mountain View is hiring a backend/system engineer to build low-latency serving and delivery systems powering monetization, with end-to-end ownership from design to rollout. You will work in a small, in-office team focusing on performance, measurement rigour, and scalable core blocks.

You will join early as one of the first ten employees, collaborating closely with founders on architecture and engineering strategy, while delivering production-grade systems under real traffic.

Qualifications

• Strong computer science fundamentals and ability to turn them into production-grade systems.
• Proven backend and distributed systems experience in high-throughput environments.
• Experience building or scaling low-latency, high-QPS systems with real ownership.
• Production engineering and debugging depth; protect correctness even when speed is tempting.
• Ability to own a technical component end to end from design through rollout and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Low-latency serving and decisioning: request handling, ranking, and auction flows under real traffic.
• Delivery infrastructure merchants can rely on: targeting, pacing, campaign management, plumbing from decisions to outcomes.
• Measurement systems for attribution, reporting, incrementality, and experimentation with correctness.
• Platform architecture for performance, scalability, and reliability; latency and correctness non-negotiable.
• AI-accelerated engineering practices to speed up design, debugging and iteration with rigorous judgement.
• Founder-level partnership: collaborate with founders on architecture and hiring, raising engineering quality across the team.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

High throughput

Production engineering

End-to-end ownership

Job description

Navii is an AI recruiter, running this search on behalf of Arbor AI.

HERE'S HOW IT WORKS

Rather than your resume sitting in a queue, you have a conversation with Navii about your experience and what you want next. What you say reaches Arbor AI's hiring team in your own words. It is a required step, takes about 25 minutes, and there is nothing to schedule.

ABOUT ARBOR AI

Arbor AI is VC-backed and being built by three founders with 25+ years of Google Ads experience across monetization, infrastructure, high-performance ads systems, and UX. You would join a small, in-office team focused on performance, measurement rigour, and building the core technical blocks that let the product scale, working closely with the founders on architecture, hiring and technical strategy.

This is a first ten employees role. You would build the low-latency serving and delivery systems that power monetization, then back them with measurement you can trust.

Also a fit if you call yourself: Backend Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Systems Engineer.

THE WORK

• Low-latency serving and decisioning: request handling, ranking, and auction flows that stay fast under real traffic.
• Delivery infrastructure merchants can rely on: targeting, pacing, campaign management, and the plumbing that turns decisions into outcomes.
• Measurement that does not lie: attribution, reporting, incrementality, and experimentation systems built for correctness and operational sanity.
• Platform architecture for performance and reliability: scalability, throughput, and production excellence. Latency and correctness are both non-negotiable.
• AI-accelerated engineering practices: use AI to speed up design, debugging and iteration while keeping engineering judgment and rigour intact.
• Founder-level partnership: collaborate directly with the founders on architecture and hiring, and help raise engineering quality across the team.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• Strong computer science fundamentals and the ability to turn them into production-grade systems.
• Proven backend and distributed systems experience, especially in high-throughput environments.
• Experience building or scaling low-latency, high-QPS systems with real operational ownership.
• Production engineering and debugging depth. You can protect correctness even when speed is tempting.
• Ability to own a technical component end to end, from design through rollout and ongoing reliability.

EVEN BETTER IF

• Experience with ads infrastructure: serving, auctions, targeting, measurement and attribution.
• Experience with large-scale data infrastructure (streaming, batch, reporting) and monetization or real-time decisioning systems.

WHO THRIVES HERE

• You make tradeoffs explicitly. Serving and delivery matter, but correctness and measurement trust stay protected values.
• You operate iteratively with strong judgment: push for the smallest scope that works, then validate that the system is genuinely reliable.
• You want your decisions to shape a company, not just a codebase.

COMP AND LOGISTICS

$160,000 to $220,000. Full-time. San Francisco Bay Area, primarily in office in Mountain View.

NON-TRADITIONAL BACKGROUNDS

If you have built and scaled high-throughput backend systems in any environment, startup or large company, and can show end-to-end ownership of reliability and correctness, we want to hear from you.