Staff Software Engineer (Backend)

Artisan; San Francisco (CA); On-site; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity upside

High-velocity work environment

Collaborative team culture

Job summary

A cutting-edge AI technology company is seeking a Backend Engineer to design and build scalable systems that power AI employees. This full-time role in San Francisco focuses on building resilient backend architectures, collaborating with cross-functional teams, and driving feature delivery. Candidates should have 2+ years of relevant experience and excel in a high-velocity environment. If you're passionate about AI and infrastructure, this is your opportunity.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of backend engineering experience in high-growth environments.
• Strong experience in building scalable and data-intensive services.
• Experience with cloud-native tools and modern backend stacks.
• Excellent communication skills for articulating architecture.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and scale backend systems for AI employees.
• Own end-to-end delivery of features into production.
• Work cross-functionally with product and design teams.
• Collaborate with AI coding agents to enhance productivity.
• Champion best practices in testing and deployment.

Skills

Backend engineering experience

Building scalable services

Proficiency with cloud-native tools

Understanding of distributed systems

Communication skills

Tools

Kubernetes

Node.js

SQL

NoSQL

Job description

About Artisan

At Artisan, we’re building real AI employees - not copilots, not assistants, but autonomous teammates.

Our first, Ava, is an AI BDR. She finds and researches leads, writes emails in customers’ tone of voice, runs outbound sequences, self-optimizes, and manages email deliverability infrastructure. She learns, adapts, and improves over time - just like a human would.

Human team members use Artisan as their primary working platform, replacing a sprawling stack of sales tools, and have Artisans working alongside them.

We went through Y Combinator (W24) and have raised $35M+ from top investors. We’re at $7M+ ARR, with hundreds of customers including Remote, Quora, and SumUp. We’re currently working on Ava 2.0, pushing the boundaries of what an AI employee can do. And we're hiring.

Your Mission

This isn’t a maintenance gig. You’ll design, build, and scale the backend that powers AI employees. Expect to:

• Build resilient, scalable services: Architect and implement backend systems and APIs that handle high-throughput AI requests with precision.

• Own end-to-end delivery: From design to deployment, you’ll shepherd features into production rapidly, with quality and ownership.

• Work cross-functionally: Partner with product, design, and AI teams to ensure backend decisions serve real user workflows.

• Use AI as a coworker: Directly collaborate with AI coding agents like Claude Code, leveraging them to boost your productivity and quality.

• Maintain engineering rigor: Champion testing, observability, deployment pipelines, and reliability best practices from day one.

• Drive long-term scalability: Iteratively improve architecture, manage technical debt, and optimize for scale as we grow.

What You Bring

• 2+ years of backend engineering experience in high-growth environments, preferably early-stage or Series B.

• Strong experience building scalable, data-intensive services with modern APIs and robust infrastructure.

• Proficiency with cloud-native tools - containers, orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), monitoring, CI/CD.

• Deep understanding of distributed systems, APIs, reliability, performance, and database systems (SQL + NoSQL).

• Experience with modern stacks - TypeScript/Node preferred, but equivalent backend stacks are welcome.

• Demonstrated track record of ownership - leading parts of systems independently and shipping with impact.

• Excellent communication, clarity in articulating architecture to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What Makes This Role Stand Out

• End-to-end ownership: You’re not just doing the “ticket”; you own feature delivery. Build systems that support intelligent, autonomous AI teammates.

• Scalable, reliable systems: Backend must handle growth and complexity. High-throughput pipelines serving AI agents across many customers.

• Hands-on infrastructure work: Jump in on deployment, monitoring, tuning. You're shaping the platform that automates itself (AI agents included).

• Collaborative, multidisciplinary environment: Work closely with product, design, ops. Work alongside AI engineers and product partners to define what AI employees can do.

• Balance innovation and technical debt: Iterate quickly while maintaining system health. Ship fast but sustainably - your engine powers AI teammates in production.

Why Artisan is the Next Career-Defining Move

• You’ll be building the infrastructure that powers AI employees - an entirely new product category.

• Real equity upside and compensation aligned with high expectations and high impact.

• High-velocity environment: release often, learn fast, iterate week over week.

• Mission-driven: reshape how businesses scale by putting AI on the front lines.

Details

• Role: Engineering

• Eng type: Backend

• Job type: Full-time

• Experience: 2+ years

• Location: San Francisco or NYC (in-person)

• Remote: In rare circumstances

• US visas: Will sponsor