Senior Platform Engineer, Core Backend — Scale AI Systems

Lightning-Ai; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Coverage

Equity (RSUs)

401(k) matching / Pension

Unlimited PTO

Winter Break

Parental & Family Leave

Learning & Development allowance

Wellness stipends

Sabbatical program

Hybrid work model

In-office meals

Job summary

Lightning AI is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and scale core backend services that power Lightning AI Studio. You will collaborate with product, infrastructure, and AI engineering teams to improve reliability, scalability, and developer experience across the platform.

You will work on authentication, resource management, multi-tenancy, and developer workflows, leading architectural decisions and mentoring engineers.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building scalable backend systems.
• Experience designing and operating distributed/cloud-native services.
• Experience building APIs, platform services, and infrastructure used by other engineers.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, and major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Strong focus on software quality, testing, observability, and CD.
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives from architecture to production.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Thrives in fast-moving startup environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services powering Lightning AI Studio.
• Develop APIs and platform services for authentication, resource management, multi-tenancy, and workflows.
• Improve reliability, observability, scalability, and performance of core platform infrastructure.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and AI engineering teams to deliver new platform capabilities.
• Evaluate and improve architecture, processes, and tooling.
• Mentor engineers and promote engineering best practices.

Skills

Backend languages

Distributed systems

APIs & infrastructure

Kubernetes & Docker

Cloud platforms

Testing & CD

Technical leadership

Communication skills

Startup environment

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Lightning AI is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and scale core backend services that power Lightning AI Studio. You will collaborate with product, infrastructure, and AI engineering teams to improve reliability, scalability, and developer experience across the platform.

You will work on authentication, resource management, multi-tenancy, and developer workflows, leading architectural decisions and mentoring engineers.