Software Engineer, Backend (New Grad)

otterai; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 136,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Otter.ai is shaping the future of work with AI-powered meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration tools. As a Software Engineer in Mountain View, you will contribute to production-grade systems that turn conversations into actionable outcomes, collaborating with product, design, and AI teams from day one.

We value recent grads or engineers with up to 1 year of experience who write clean, maintainable code in modern languages and understand backend concepts such as APIs, databases,

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Up to 1 year of software development experience.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and systems.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship production software.
• Own problems end-to-end from idea through deployment and monitoring.
• Design for latency, cost, reliability, and quality.
• Develop backend services, APIs, and async workflows.
• Improve quality using metrics, logging, and user feedback.

Skills

CS fundamentals

Backend basics

Code quality

Collaboration

Adaptability

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

GCP

CI/CD

LLM features

ML systems

Job description

The Opportunity

We're building the next generation of AI-native product experiences, where conversations turn directly into outcomes. As a Software Engineer on our engineering teams, you'll join one of our engineering teams and help build the systems that power meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration for users around the world.

You’ll work on real production systems from day one. Depending on your team, that could mean working on user-facing features or the services and infrastructure behind them. You’ll partner closely with engineers, product, design, and AI teams to design, ship, and iterate.

Your Impact

Build and ship production software. Design, implement, test, and deploy features and services that serve real users at scale.

Own problems end-to-end. Take work from idea through design, implementation, rollout, and monitoring.

Design for real-world constraints. Make deliberate tradeoffs across latency, cost, reliability, and quality.

Build clean, scalable systems. Develop backend services, APIs, and async workflows that are maintainable and built to evolve.

Improve quality continuously. Use metrics, logging, user feedback, and experimentation to find problems and make systems better.

Move quickly with modern tools. Use AI-assisted development and modern tooling to prototype and ship fast while keeping a high engineering bar.

We're looking for someone who

• Has a bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science or a related field
• Is a recent grad or has up to 1 year of experience building software, with a growing sense of how backend decisions impact user experience
• Writes clean, maintainable code in a modern language (Python, Go, Java, C++, or similar) and has a solid grasp of computer science fundamentals such as data structures, algorithms, and systems basics.
• Has some exposure to backend or systems concepts such as APIs, databases, distributed systems, or cloud infrastructure
• Thinks about outcomes, not just implementation, and cares whether what they build is reliable and useful
• Takes ownership of problems end-to-end and collaborates well across product, design, and AI disciplines
• Is comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and can iterate quickly on both product and technical direction

Nice to haves

• Any experience (including coursework, projects, or internships) building backend, infrastructure, or product-facing systems
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP), containers, or CI/CD
• Any experience with LLM-powered features or ML systems (prompting, evaluation, RAG, speech recognition, etc.)

About Otter.ai

We are in the business of shaping the future of work. Our mission is to make conversations more valuable.

With over 1B meetings transcribed, Otter.ai is the world's leading tool for meeting transcription, summarization, and collaboration. Using artificial intelligence, Otter generates real-time automated meeting notes, summaries, and other insights from in-person and virtual meetings - turning meetings into accessible, collaborative, and actionable data that can be shared across teams and organizations. The company is backed by early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom, and Tesla.

Otter.ai is an equal opportunity employer. We proudly celebrate diversity and are committed to building an inclusive and accessible workplace. We provide reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants throughout the hiring process.

Accessibility & Accommodations

Otter.ai is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our hiring process. If you need assistance or an accommodation during any stage of the recruitment process, please contact [e-mail] at least 3 business days before your interview.

Salary range

Salary Range: $136,000 to $164,500 USD per year.

This salary range represents the low and high end of the estimated salary range for this position. The actual base salary offered for the role is dependent on several factors. Our base salary is just one component of a comprehensive total rewards package.