Staff Backend Architect & Tech Lead for Scalable Platforms

StackAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

StackAI is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to own the backbone of our platform and guide architectural decisions. You’ll shape scale from thousands to millions of users and mentor engineers to raise the bar for reliability and developer excellence.

You will collaborate with founders and product leads, define system design patterns, and drive infrastructure choices to support rapid AI-powered workflows in a fast-moving startup.

Qualifications

• Proven backend leader with architecture ownership
• Strong Python and web framework experience (FastAPI)
• Deep knowledge of system design, data modeling, and scaling distributed systems
• Hands-on with SQL and NoSQL databases (Postgres, Supabase)
• Expertise in cloud infrastructure (AWS) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Excellent problem-solving and communication; ability to influence technical direction
• Comfortable in fast-paced startup with evolving priorities

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and lead scalable backend systems for our no-code AI platform
• Define long-term backend strategy and service boundaries
• Mentor engineers, review designs, and promote best practices
• Integrate AI models and data sources ensuring robust performance
• Collaborate with product/design/frontend to translate user needs into backend solutions
• Evolve infrastructure for reliability, observability, and performance
• Balance velocity with maintainable, scalable design

Skills

Python

FastAPI

System design

Distributed systems

SQL

NoSQL

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Ownership

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Postgres

SQLAlchemy

Supabase

Notion

Job description

StackAI is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to own the backbone of our platform and guide architectural decisions. You’ll shape scale from thousands to millions of users and mentor engineers to raise the bar for reliability and developer excellence.

You will collaborate with founders and product leads, define system design patterns, and drive infrastructure choices to support rapid AI-powered workflows in a fast-moving startup.