Senior Platform Engineer, Core Backend Systems

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Equity

401(k) matching

Unlimited PTO

Hybrid work

Office meals

Job summary

Lightning AI is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and scale core platform services for researchers, startups, and enterprise AI teams. You’ll work on backend systems supporting authentication, resource management, multi-tenancy, and developer workflows.

This role is based in one of our San Francisco, NYC, or London office hubs, requiring a minimum of two in-person days weekly and collaboration with product, infrastructure, and AI engineering teams to improve reliability and

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building scalable backend systems using Go, Python, Rust, React or similar languages.
• Strong experience designing and operating distributed systems or cloud-native services.
• Experience building APIs, platform services, and infrastructure that other engineers depend on.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, and modern cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Strong understanding of software quality, automated testing, observability, and continuous delivery.
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives from architecture through production.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams.

Responsibilities

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

Skills

Go

Python

Rust

React

Distributed systems

APIs

Cloud platforms

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Lightning AI is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and scale core platform services for researchers, startups, and enterprise AI teams. You’ll work on backend systems supporting authentication, resource management, multi-tenancy, and developer workflows.

This role is based in one of our San Francisco, NYC, or London office hubs, requiring a minimum of two in-person days weekly and collaboration with product, infrastructure, and AI engineering teams to improve reliability and