Staff Backend Engineer

Giga; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base + bonus + equity

Catered lunch daily

Dinner stipend

$500/month wellness & commuter benefit

401(k) plan

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Job summary

Giga is seeking a Staff Engineer to shape the technical direction of our backend systems. You will lead complex projects, make architectural decisions that affect the whole platform, and raise the bar for engineering quality across the team.

This is a role for someone who writes code, owns systems, and ships, while thinking beyond immediate work to plan what the team should build next and how to build it.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience.
• Ability to lead complex projects and make architectural decisions.
• Strong track record of building scalable systems.
• Hands-on coder who ships features and mentrors others.

Responsibilities

• Shape the technical direction of our backend systems and lead high-impact projects.
• Make architectural tradeoffs to balance speed, reliability, and complexity.
• Own critical infrastructure and drive engineering quality and best practices.
• Mentor engineers across teams and raise the overall bar for engineering output.

Skills

Backend engineering

System architecture

Leadership

Code quality

Mentoring

Hands-on coding

Tools

Python

TypeScript

Django

FastAPI

AWS

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

Next.js

Job description

About Giga

Giga has recently raised a $61M Series A and is working with Fortune 500 customers to deploy the next generation of customer experience - real-time AI agents that can understand emotion, resolve issues instantly, and scale across the world's largest enterprises.

Industry leaders like DoorDash trust Giga with their most complex support and operations workflows across voice, chat, and email, in high‑stakes regulated environments where accuracy and compliance matter. We're at an exciting inflection point.

While we've found real commercial success, our ambitions are larger: to become the go‑to AI platform for all enterprise automation, powered by our voice superintelligence. The work affects millions of people every day, and our team has the autonomy to make true impact – with brilliant founders, a clear path forward, and the kind of momentum that defines generational companies.

If being part of that resonates with you, we'd love to hear from you!

• Voice AI startup Giga raises $61M Series A

• DoorDash and Giga Partnership

The Role

We're looking for a staff engineer to help shape the technical direction of our backend systems. You'll lead complex projects, make architectural decisions that affect the whole platform, and raise the bar for engineering quality across the team.

This is a role for someone who wants to build, not just advise. You'll write code, own systems, and ship, but you'll also be expected to think beyond your immediate work to identify what the team should be building next and how we should build it.

What You'll Work On

You'll drive technical initiatives across the company. Some examples:

• System architecture: Designing how our agent infrastructure should evolve as we scale, making tradeoffs between speed, reliability, and complexity

• Hard technical problems: Owning the most ambiguous, highest‑stakes projects where getting it wrong would hurt the business

• Technical strategy: Identifying gaps in our systems before they become problems and building the case for addressing them

• Engineering quality: Setting standards for code review, system design, and operational excellence through your own work

At the staff level, you'll work across team boundaries and be responsible for outcomes beyond your individual output. You'll mentor other engineers and help them grow, but through collaboration on real work rather than formal management.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python (Django/FastAPI), TypeScript (Node.js)

• Infrastructure: AWS, Modal, Kubernetes, Postgres

• Frontend: TypeScript, Next.js (you'll interact with this when needed)

You Might Be a Fit If You

• Have 7+ years of backend engineering experience, with a track record of leading complex projects

• Have opinions about how systems should be built, and can articulate the tradeoffs behind those opinions

• Can take a vague problem and turn it into a clear technical approach without much guidance

• Write excellent code and hold others to a high standard without being a bottleneck

• Are energized by hard problems and comfortable with uncertainty

• Want to be hands‑on at a company where staff engineers ship code, not just review it

• Have built systems that scaled and understand what breaks at each order of magnitude

Perks & Benefits

• Competitive base + bonus + equity

• Catered lunch daily

• Dinner stipend

• $500/month wellness & commuter benefit (gym, fitness classes, mental health)

• 401(k) plan

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Giga is an equal opportunity employer. We're committed to providing equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.