Staff Backend Engineer, AI

OpenPhone; United States; Remote; USD 188,000 - 208,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in VoIP technology is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer. This role focuses on designing AI-driven systems and requires extensive experience in backend engineering, especially with LLM integrations. The company promotes a collaborative environment and values innovation in asynchronous remote work. The position offers competitive compensation and opportunities to grow.

Benefits

Equity

Extensive medical coverage

Monthly lifestyle stipend

Flexible PTO policy

Qualifications

• 10+ years of backend or platform engineering experience.
• Proven success leading architecture for business-critical services.
• Deep knowledge of LLM integration patterns and prompt design.

Responsibilities

• Own the long-term architecture for AI orchestration frameworks.
• Lead cross-functional delivery of AI features from proof to production.
• Mentor engineers through design and technical coaching.

Skills

Backend Engineering

Platform Engineering

LLM-driven systems

Event-driven architectures

Streaming architectures

Cost optimization

Observability

Incident response

Tools

Node

Typescript

Kubernetes

AWS

RabbitMQ

Postgres

Mongo

Elastic

Redis

Datadog

Job description

For millions of teams working in dozens of industries, day-to-day business gets done on the phone. So why — despite the huge leaps we've taken in design and usability — does most business phone software still look, feel, and act like it was born in the 90s? OpenPhone is changing that.

We’re a new type of business phone with a mission to help people communicate better and be more productive.

We’re backed by Y Combinator and some of the best venture firms around including Tiger Global, Craft Ventures, Slow Ventures, and others. We take pride in providing an exceptional customer experience and a product people love, which is why we’re excited that our customers have rated us the #1 VoIP Provider onG2 .

OpenPhone is the modern, sophisticated answer to the clunky, outdated phone systems that have been slowing down businesses for years. With thousands of happy customers and several rounds of funding in just five years, it's safe to say we're onto something big.

About the Role

OpenPhone’s AI capabilities power everything from intelligent call assistants to automated workflows that help thousands of businesses communicate better. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will own the technical strategy for how we design, build, and operate AI features across the product. You’ll partner closely with leaders across engineering, product, and security to translate ambitious product ideas into scalable, dependable systems. Your architectural choices will shape how every customer experiences AI inside OpenPhone—from the very first trial call to fully deployed agents—and you’ll be trusted to balance cutting-edge innovation with rock-solid reliability.

Things you’ll do:

• Own the long-term architecture for AI orchestration frameworks, agent-based workflows, and model lifecycle management.
• Lead cross-functional delivery of AI features from proof of concept to production rollout, coordinating engineering, product, design, and CX.
• Establish best practices for prompt engineering, evaluation, versioning, observability, and incident response for AI services.
• Design and optimize low-latency streaming pipelines for speech and other real-time data when the customer experience demands it.
• Drive continuous cost, performance, reliability, and security improvements for models and infrastructure.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and technical coaching, raising the bar for excellence across teams.
• Partner with security and platform leaders to ensure data privacy, compliance, and operational excellence.
• Stay current on advances in LLMs, agent architectures, and emerging tooling, translating insights into actionable roadmap proposals.
• Our backend is built on Node using Typescript.
• Our AI Infrastructure uses temporal.io , vector DBs, libraries like Langchain and top-tier llm models.
• We use Kubernetes on AWS to orchestrate our infrastructure setup and deployment.
• The overall architecture is event-driven microservices with RabbitMQ at the center of it.
• We use a variety of databases for different purposes: Postgres, Mongo, Elastic, and Redis.
• We have the following clients - Web (React), Android and iOS.
• We use Kong as our public API Gateway.
• Observability Tools: Datadog
• Other Tools: Figma, Linear, Notion, and Slack

About You:

• 10+ years of backend or platform engineering experience, including LLM-driven systems in production.
• Proven success leading architecture for business-critical services, balancing innovation with operational pragmatism.
• Deep knowledge of LLM integration patterns, prompt design, vector search, and agent frameworks.
• Expertise in event-driven and streaming architectures; you can reason about concurrency, ordering, and back-pressure under load.
• Track record of driving cost optimization, observability, and incident response for AI workloads.
• Excellent written and verbal communicator who aligns diverse stakeholders and produces clear, thorough design docs.
• Collaborative leader who mentors others, fosters psychological safety, and elevates the entire engineering organization.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, you break down complex problems, make informed trade-offs, and deliver iterative value quickly.
• Empathetic and customer-focused, you balance technical decisions with user experience and business impact.

Compensation

The annual base salary range for this position is as follow, plus equity and benefits:

SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Boston, New York, and Washington, DC Metro: $211,000 - $234,000 USD
All other US Locations: $188,000 - $208,000 USD
Canada: $215,000 - $237,000 CAD

The ranges displayed reflect the target for new hire salaries, and within each range, individual pay is determined by your skills and experience, as well as relevant education. Your recruiter can share more and answer questions about the specific salary range during the hiring process.

Salary is just one component of OpenPhone’s total compensation package. Your total rewards package will include equity, extensive medical coverage, a monthly lifestyle stipend, and a flexible PTO policy.

Who we are

As a fully remote company, we thrive asynchronously as a team. We are curious, ambitious, and dedicated to our work. We value trust above all else, and have a strong bias for action. If you're looking for a place to do your life's work, please get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.

And remember, there's no such thing as a 'perfect' candidate. We're looking for optimists with grit and determination, who are excited to face the challenges of a growing startup. OpenPhone is the type of company where you can grow, and we encourage you to apply for this role even if you don't think you meet all the requirements.

We are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse work environment. It is important that you are able to bring your authentic self to work every day. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. #LI-Remote

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

First Name *

Last Name *

Email *

Phone

Resume/CV *

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

How many years of experience do you have working on backend and platform related roles? * Select...

Do you have experience building AI products and systems in commercial production environments? * Select...

How many years of experience do you have working on AI-relevant projects and in AI-focused roles? * Select...

Why are you interested in working at OpenPhone? *

What interests you about this particular role? *

Will you require visa sponsorship to work in the United States or Canada? * Select...

We would like to hire this role in the United States or Canada. Please confirm your current residence. * Select...

LinkedIn Profile *

Website

When you apply to a job on this site, the personal data contained in your application will be collected by OpenPhone (“Controller”), which is located at 2261 Market St PMB 4157, San Francisco, California, 94114, and can be contacted by emailing [e-mail]. Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Controller’s recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results thereto, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) as necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller, which are the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment.Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., a cloud services provider located in the United States of America and engaged by Controller to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, your personal data will be transferred to the United States once you submit it through this site. Because the European Union Commission has determined that United States data privacy laws do not ensure an adequate level of protection for personal data collected from EU data subjects, the transfer will be subject to appropriate additional safeguards under the standard contractual clauses.Your personal data will be retained by Controller as long as Controller determines it is necessary to evaluate your application for employment. Under the GDPR, you have the right to request access to your personal data, to request that your personal data be rectified or erased, and to request that processing of your personal data be restricted. You also have to right to data portability. In addition, you may lodge a complaint with an EU supervisory authority. * Select...

U.S. Standard Demographic Questions

We invite applicants to share their demographic background. If you choose to complete this survey, your responses may be used to identify areas of improvement in our hiring process.

How would you describe your gender identity? (mark all that apply) Select...

How would you describe your racial/ethnic background? (mark all that apply) Select...

How would you describe your sexual orientation? (mark all that apply) Select...

Do you identify as transgender? Select...

Do you have a disability or chronic condition (physical, visual, auditory, cognitive, mental, emotional, or other) that substantially limits one or more of your major life activities, including mobility, communication (seeing, hearing, speaking), and learning? Select...

Are you a veteran or active member of the United States Armed Forces? Select...