Software Engineer, Platform

People Culture Talent; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health, dental, vision

Visa sponsorship available

Equity opportunity

Job summary

Our client in San Francisco is seeking a Software Engineer, Platform to shape the future of AI model evaluation and delivery. You will join as a founding member of the developer team, working with founders and early customers to define and build scalable platform capabilities.

The role focuses on building a robust backend platform, streaming API handling, and observability, with onsite presence in San Francisco three days per week and strong collaboration across teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, focused on backend services or distributed systems.
• Strong Golang experience and production-grade backend systems.
• Experience designing reliable APIs, service integrations, or gateway-style systems.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale backend platform services for the AI gateway.
• Handle SSE/streaming responses across providers and ensure fault tolerance.
• Implement authentication, rate limiting, usage metering, and cost tracking.
• Build observability with distributed tracing and real-time dashboards.
• Collaborate with research and product teams to turn ideas into features.
• Work across platform and product boundaries on Leaderboards and Evals.

Skills

Backend engineering

Golang

API design

Distributed systems

Platform experience

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud (GCP/AWS/Azure)

Job description

Note: We are recruiting on behalf of our valued client. This opportunity is for a position with their organization, not with People Culture Talent. We're excited to help connect talented professionals with this exceptional team!

The Role

The open AI evaluation platform redefining how the world's leading AI labs measure model performance is looking for a Software Engineer, Platform to help shape the future of how the world measures artificial intelligence.

They are building an AI gateway that gives developers access to multiple model providers through a unified endpoint. The product is in a private, gated launch, with additional platform capabilities—including direct model access—being built next.

You’ll help build the platform infrastructure that turns their research advantage into enterprise products. This is a founding role on the developer team. You’ll work directly with the founders and early customers to define what they build and how they build it.

Location: San Francisco onsite three days per week. Remote candidates will generally only be considered with a strong endorsement.

What You’ll Do

• Build and scale hands-on backend platform services for client's AI gateway, evolving an existing prototype into a reliable, independently scalable service.
• Solve hard streaming problems. Handle SSE/streaming responses across heterogeneous providers, including partial failure recovery, mid-stream fallback, and consistent response normalization.
• Ship reliable platform infrastructure, including capabilities such as authentication, rate limiting, usage metering, and cost tracking as the gateway matures.
• Build deep observability. Instrument the platform with distributed tracing, latency breakdowns, usage tracking, and real-time dashboards so customers (and the team) can see exactly what’s happening.
• Build AI-centered platform capabilities. Integrate with client's evaluation platform and data, and collaborate with research and product teams to turn new ideas into reliable product features.
• Flex across the stack. Contribute to the backend of the company's Leaderboards and Evals products when needed, working across platform and product boundaries.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, focused on backend services, distributed systems, or developer-facing platforms.
• Strong Golang experience is required. You have built and operated meaningful backend systems in production.
• Experience designing reliable APIs, service integrations, or gateway/proxy-style systems.
• For Senior candidates: a track record of owning and delivering important backend functionality end to end.
• For Staff candidates: extensive backend/platform experience, strong technical judgment, and the ability to provide hands-on technical leadership.
• Cloud experience with GCP, AWS, Azure, or another major provider is helpful but not required.
• Comfortable working hands-on in a fast-moving environment where the product and infrastructure are still evolving.
• Able to work from our San Francisco office three days per week.

Nice to Have

• API gateway, proxy, or multi-provider integration experience.
• Experience with streaming APIs, response normalization, or resilient distributed systems.
• Exposure to LLM APIs, model serving, AI infrastructure, or evaluation platforms.
• Cloud infrastructure experience across GCP, AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, Postgres, or Redis.
• Experience building usage tracking, billing/metering, authentication, or developer tooling.

Compensation Band

Their openings span more than one career level. The starting salary for this role is $200k and could range up to $350k USD, plus equity. The provided salary depends on many factors, such as work experience and transferable skills, business needs and impact, and market demands.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and additional support programs.
• The opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI with a small, mission-driven team.
• A culture that values transparency, trust, and community impact.
• Visa sponsorship available.

About Our Client

This fast-growing startup is building technology that helps people better understand how AI models perform in real-world settings. Its open evaluation platform provides researchers, developers, and organizations with meaningful insights into model quality and performance.

Through crowdsourced benchmarks and human preference data, the company helps inform important decisions about the development and use of artificial intelligence. Its evaluation tools and leaderboards have become trusted resources within the AI community.

Behind the platform is a team of experienced researchers, engineers, and builders who seek truth, move quickly, and care deeply about craftsmanship and impact. They’re building a company where deep expertise meets curiosity and where the work genuinely matters.

Compensation Range: $200K - $350K