Staff Backend Engineer

Bedrock Talent; Somerville (MA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Bedrock Talent is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer in Boston (Hybrid) to help build the APIs and backend systems powering their AI products. You will partner with product, infrastructure, and ML teams to translate models into scalable, reliable services for developers and enterprise customers.

You will design and maintain production-grade APIs, improve reliability and performance, mentor teammates, and shape system architecture for growth.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building backend systems in production.
• Strong object-oriented Python experience and API design skills.
• Ability to collaborate across engineering, product, and ML teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain production APIs serving enterprise and developer customers.
• Partner with product and machine learning teams to deliver customer-facing features.
• Improve system reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Help establish architectural patterns that support long-term growth.
• Debug production systems and continuously improve platform stability.
• Mentor teammates and contribute to engineering best practices.

Skills

Backend systems

Python

APIs design

Tools

REST APIs

Cloud Infrastructure

ML platforms

Job description

Staff Backend Engineer

Boston, MA (Hybrid)

About Bedrock Talent

At Bedrock Talent, we're intentional about the companies we represent.

We don't partner with every startup that comes our way. We work with founders we'd be excited to work for ourselves, companies solving meaningful problems, and teams we genuinely believe have the potential to build category-defining businesses.

This is one of those companies.

About the Company

Our client is an AI company at the forefront of conversational intelligence, building technology that helps organizations better understand human communication in real time.

Their platform combines cutting-edge machine learning with developer-first infrastructure to power products that detect harmful behavior, prevent fraud, and create safer digital experiences across enterprise and consumer applications.

With a growing customer base and a world-class machine learning team, they're now investing heavily in the platform that brings those AI capabilities to developers and enterprise customers at scale.

The Opportunity

We're looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to help build the APIs and backend systems that power the company's next generation of AI products.

This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering and machine learning. You'll partner closely with product, infrastructure, and ML teams to transform sophisticated voice intelligence models into scalable, reliable APIs used by customers around the world.

If you enjoy designing elegant backend systems, solving distributed systems challenges, and building products that enable other developers, this is an opportunity to have outsized impact.

Before You Apply

Rather than bury the important details in a long job description, here are the things that usually determine whether someone gets excited about this opportunity—or realizes it probably isn't the right fit.

You'll Build the Platform Behind the Product

This isn't an internal tooling role.

You'll build the APIs and backend infrastructure that enable customers to integrate cutting-edge conversational AI into their own products and workflows.

AI Is at the Core

The company has developed world-class machine learning models for understanding human conversation.

Your role is to make those models accessible, scalable, and reliable through thoughtfully designed APIs and backend services.

Greenfield Meets Scale

You'll have the opportunity to build new systems while also improving and scaling infrastructure that's already serving production customers.

If you enjoy balancing architecture, performance, and shipping quickly, you'll find plenty to dig into.

A Collaborative Engineering Culture

Engineering, product, and machine learning work closely together.

Ideas are shared openly, technical discussions are encouraged, and engineers are trusted to influence both implementation and product direction.

That's one of the reasons Bedrock Talent chose to partner with this team.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain production APIs serving enterprise and developer customers.

• Partner with product and machine learning teams to deliver customer-facing features.

• Improve system reliability, scalability, and performance.

• Help establish architectural patterns that support long-term growth.

• Debug production systems and continuously improve platform stability.

• Mentor teammates and contribute to engineering best practices.

Tech Stack

• Python

• REST APIs

• Cloud Infrastructure

• Machine Learning Platforms

• Modern Backend Architecture

We're Looking For Someone Who...

• Has extensive experience building backend systems in production.

• Has strong object-oriented Python experience.

• Has designed and maintained production APIs.

• Enjoys collaborating across engineering and product teams.

• Has experience building greenfield systems as well as scaling mature platforms.

• Thinks pragmatically and enjoys solving complex technical problems.

This Role Is Probably a Great Fit If...

• You enjoy building developer platforms and backend infrastructure.

• You want to work alongside exceptional machine learning engineers.

• You're energized by technically challenging problems at the intersection of AI and distributed systems.

• You enjoy balancing speed, reliability, and thoughtful system design.

• You want to help shape the technical direction of a rapidly growing AI company.

This Role Probably Isn't the Right Fit If...

• You prefer frontend or product-focused engineering over backend platform work.

• You're looking for a highly specialized role with limited ownership.

• You enjoy large organizations with multiple layers of process more than fast-moving, collaborative teams.

Compensation & Benefits

The company believes in transparent and equitable compensation. In addition to a competitive salary and meaningful equity, employees receive comprehensive health benefits, flexible PTO, generous holidays, professional development support, hybrid work flexibility, and a culture that prioritizes both high performance and long-term sustainability.

Salary Range: $180,000–$200,000 base, plus equity.

Why This Role?

Backend engineering opportunities like this don't come around often.

You'll help define the platform powering a new generation of AI products while working alongside an exceptional engineering and machine learning team. If you're looking for meaningful ownership, challenging technical problems, and the opportunity to build infrastructure that enables AI at scale, we'd love to connect.