Senior Software Engineer - Backend & AI Infra

Stanford Climate Ventures; New York (NY); On-site; USD 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity upside

Health/dental/vision insurance

Unlimited PTO

High-end equipment and tooling

Visa support

Job summary

CVector is seeking a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Backend & AI Infra to advance our real-time economic optimization platform. You will own core backend systems, time-series data pipelines, and AI-assisted analytics, collaborating with product and modeling teams to scale reliability and AI capabilities.

This NYC-based, hybrid role emphasizes architecture and end-to-end platform ownership. You will lead migrations, improve data ingestion, and drive performance across time-series stores

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and operating production backend systems.

Responsibilities

• Map customer domains and workflows into prompts and AI interfaces.
• Design/evaluate AI outputs and reinforcement signals.
• Refine context selection, retrieval, and trace collection.
• Fine-tune smaller models for latency and performance.
• Evaluate/integrate new AI platforms and models.
• Support training/deployment of time-series models.
• Lead migrations and upgrades of time-series data schemas and storage engines.
• Maintain PostgreSQL infrastructure and data connectors.
• Lead MQTT-based data ingestion improvements.
• Transition PostgREST to GraphQL and evolve API architecture.
• Improve TigerData design and multi-tenant provisioning.
• Optimize high-volume time-series stores for performance.
• Design architecture plans for TigerData.
• Use Parquet/Iceberg formats for analytics workloads.
• Balance real-time vs historical queries.
• Improve ML systems, parallel training workflows, and orchestration.
• Improve reliability, observability, and developer tooling; port bun to Node.js; track DORA metrics; participate in on-call rotation.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Distributed systems

Time-series data

Cloud infrastructure

Education

Engineering degree or equivalent

Tools

PostgreSQL

MQTT

GraphQL

Supabase

InfluxDB

Job description

CVector’s mission is to bring real time economic optimization and AI prediction to every energy and manufacturing plant.

Industrial facilities make decisions every minute that determine cost, reliability, and margin, but the signals that matter live in different worlds: live asset constraints and process reality on one side, feedstock prices, product prices, demand, and market dynamics on the other. We fuse those worlds into one decision layer that continuously forecasts what is coming, simulates what could happen, and optimizes what to do next, so plants can run closer to their true economic potential every day.

This position works from our New York City office four days per week. CVector has customers across the United States and operates real-world systems in demanding industrial environments.

Role Overview

As a Senior Software Engineer - Backend & AI Infra focus, you will play a critical role in evolving CVector’s core backend platform. You will work on time-series data systems, AI-assisted analytics, cloud infrastructure, and data ingestion pipelines that power our customer-facing applications and internal modeling platforms.

This role is well-suited for an engineer who enjoys working close to the data and infrastructure layers, has strong architectural judgment, and is excited to operate across AI systems, databases, and distributed backend services. You will take ownership of complex systems, drive major technical migrations, and help shape how intelligence is embedded into industrial energy workflows.

You will collaborate closely with product, modeling, and frontend engineers, and you will have significant influence over platform direction, reliability, and long-term scalability.

Key Responsibilities

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will contribute across several interconnected areas:

Intelligent Systems

• Map customer domains and operational workflows into effective prompts and AI system interfaces
• Design, execute, and iterate on evals for AI outputs
• Incorporate customer feedback and reinforcement signals to improve system behavior
• Refine context selection, retrieval, and trace collection to improve output quality
• Fine-tune smaller models using collected traces to reduce latency while preserving performance
• Evaluate and integrate new AI platforms and models as they become available
• Support training and deployment of large, time-series-focused models

Backend Platform & Data Infrastructure

• Lead migrations and upgrades of our time-series data schemas and storage engines
• Upgrade and maintain PostgreSQL and related database infrastructure
• Develop and maintain data connectors for industrial and third-party systems
• Lead MQTT-based data ingestion pipeline improvements
• Transition PostgREST to GraphQL-based framework and evolve our API architecture
• Improve TigerData to next-gen time series design and simplify multi-tenant provisioning workflows

Database & Analytics Systems

• Optimize performance and reliability of high-volume time-series data stores
• Design and execute architecture plans for TigerData
• Augment analytical workloads using Parquet and/or Iceberg-based storage formats
• Balance real-time and historical query performance across operational and analytical use cases

Modeling Platform Support

• Improve and consolidate internal machine learning systems
• Enable parallelized and distributed model training workflows
• Implement message brokers and orchestration mechanisms for multi-stage learning pipelines
• Improve reproducibility, traceability, and coordination across modeling stages

Reliability & Developer Experience

• Strengthen cloud infrastructure uptime, observability, and deployment reliability
• Standardize build, test, and release processes across services
• Improve developer tooling and internal platform ergonomics
• Port backend services from bun to Node.js where appropriate
• Track and improve DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, recovery time)
• Participate in an on-call rotation and continuously improve operational readiness

Our current technology stack includes Python, TypeScript, Supabase, PostgreSQL, MQTT, TigerData, InfluxDB, AWS, and GitHub-based CI/CD workflows.

A strong candidate will bring:

• A relevant engineering degree or equivalent professional experience with a strong computer science foundation
• 5+ years experience building and operating production backend systems
• Strong proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript for backend development
• Experience with databases, especially PostgreSQL and time-series or analytical data stores
• Familiarity with event-driven systems, streaming data, or message brokers
• Experience designing or supporting AI/ML systems in production is a strong plus
• Comfort working on infrastructure, data pipelines, and evolving system architectures
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate in a high-ownership environment
• Experience working in a startup or fast-moving product organization
• Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites to understand real-world constraints
• Working experience in FinTech, quantitative analysis, and econometrics greatly preferred

CVector provides team members with:

• A competitive compensation package with meaningful equity upside
• A robust selection of health, dental, and vision insurance options
• Optional Health Flexible Spending Account (FSA)
• Unlimited PTO with a three week minimum per year, plus additional sick days
• Top of the line work equipment and IT setup, including high performance laptops and a modern developer stack
• Unlimited access to the latest AI agent systems and productivity tools to help you move faster and build better
• Visa support for candidates currently based in the US, including employer sponsored visa applications where applicable

The anticipated base salary range for this role is $125,000 to $150,000.

Why This Role Matters at CVector

This role sits at the intersection of AI systems, time-series data, and real-world energy infrastructure. Your work will directly impact system reliability, customer trust, and CVector’s ability to scale intelligent energy management across industries.

If you enjoy solving deep backend problems, shaping platform foundations, and embedding intelligence into physical systems, this role offers both technical challenge and real-world impact.