Software Engineer, Backend

Mirage; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

401K with match

Catered lunches

Dinner stipend

Grubhub subscription

Wellness perks

Team offsites

Generous PTO

Job summary

Mirage is hiring senior backend engineers to own end-to-end backend systems across services, APIs, data pipelines, and infrastructure powering our AI-driven video products.

You will work with product, platform, and ML teams to deploy scalable production systems and improve reliability, performance, and scalability in a fast-paced startup environment in NYC.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional industry experience.
• A track record of shipping high‑impact systems and/or products in production.
• Excellent engineering taste combined with practicality and time-management.
• Able to operate effectively in an extremely fast-paced environment and deliver end-to-end projects.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own backend systems end-to-end, including services, APIs, data pipelines, and infrastructure that power our products.
• Solve complex technical challenges across distributed systems, scaling, concurrency, and performance.
• Integrate and operate large generative AI models in production—deploying, serving, and scaling systems that combine internal research and external capabilities to unlock new product experiences.
• Instrument, experiment, and iterate in production to continuously improve system and product quality.
• Design and operate core platform infrastructure, including integrations with third-party providers, storage systems, security, and internal APIs.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Gen AI / LLMs

Production deployments

Problem solving

Fast-paced environment

Job description

Mirage is an AI video company focused on making creation dramatically easier. Our team tackles some of the hardest creative and technical challenges in generative media.

We get to rethink how people collaborate with AI that can actually do creative work with them—defining entirely new interaction paradigms for AI-native video tools. We make that possible by building multimodal agents that turn creative direction into edits, rendering engines that composite multiple layers of video and graphics, and generative video models trained from the ground up that create new media when needed.

All of this comes together in Captions, our creative workspace for generating, editing, and designing video. The technology behind Captions is now available more broadly: Tesseract gives any AI agent native video-editing capabilities, while developers can integrate our models into their own products through APIs.

Explore our work Captions — Tesseract — Research — Updates — TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company — Press

Our Investors

We’re very fortunate to have some the best investors and entrepreneurs backing us, including Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Uncommon Projects, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Lenny Rachitsky, Antoine Martin, Julie Zhuo, Ben Rubin, Jaren Glover, SVAngel, 20VC, Ludlow Ventures, Chapter One, and more.

Please note that most of our roles will require you to be in-person at our NYC HQ (located in Union Square)

About the role

Backend engineering at Mirage isn’t narrowly defined. We work across product, platform, and machine learning—building the systems, services, APIs, and ML pipelines that power all of our product surfaces.

You’ll own critical backend systems end-to-end, partnering closely with product, design, client, and AI teams to turn ambitious ideas into reliable, scalable production systems. This opportunity is ideal for engineers who enjoy solving complex technical problems while staying connected to product and user outcomes.

While we don’t use hierarchical titles or levels internally, we are currently hiring engineers who have operated at senior or staff+ scope.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own backend systems end-to-end, including services, APIs, data pipelines, and infrastructure that power our products
• Solve complex technical challenges across distributed systems, scaling, concurrency, and performance
• Integrate and operate large generative AI models in production—deploying, serving, and scaling systems that combine internal research and external capabilities to unlock new product experiences.
• Instrument, experiment, and iterate in production to continuously improve system and product quality
• Design and operate core platform infrastructure, including integrations with third-party providers, storage systems, security, and internal APIs

What Makes You a Great Fit

• 5+ years of professional industry experience
• A track record of shipping high‑impact systems and/or products in production
• Exceptional problem solving fundamentals and ability to learn
• Excellent engineering taste combined with a strong sense of practicality and time-management
• Able to operate effectively in an extremely fast-paced environment as well as scope and deliver projects end-to-end

Even better if...

• You have worked extensively with LLMs, generative media models, and have a pulse on where the technology is going
• You are grounded, collaborative, and willing to do whatever it takes to help the team win
• You have been a startup founder or an early engineer at one

Benefits:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• 401K with employer match
• Commuter Benefits
• Catered lunch multiple days per week
• Dinner stipend every night if you're working late and want a bite!
• Grubhub subscription
• Health & Wellness Perks
• Multiple team offsites per year with team events every month
• Generous PTO policy

Captions provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Please note benefits apply to full time employees only.