Staff Backend Engineer, Slackbot AI - Slack

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Leadout Capital seeks an experienced Staff Backend Product Engineer to design, build, and own scalable systems and APIs for Slackbot’s product experience. You will enhance intelligent search, third-party data integrations, and platform foundations to support millions of users.

The role emphasizes simplicity, reliability, and strong collaboration with product, design, and engineering teams to deliver high-impact features and maintainable codebases.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience building and shipping web applications with a backend focus.
• Experience with functional or imperative programming languages (PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, Go, or C).
• Experience with search infrastructure, large-scale APIs, or AI-powered systems.
• Ability to contribute to technical architecture discussions across teams.
• Track record of writing understandable, testable code with maintainability in mind.
• Strong CS fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, distributed systems, and IR.
• Excellent communication skills to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Conceptualize and build backend features in collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers.
• Drive search and intelligence capabilities to surface relevant information across sources.
• Deliver high-quality results with measurable impact on product and user experience.
• Own team features or core systems and define long-term health and roadmaps.
• Support operations by triaging production issues and improving reliability.
• Mentor engineers, review code, and raise engineering standards and tooling.

Skills

Backend development

APIs

Search infrastructure

Distributed systems

Data structures

Communication skills

Tools

MySQL

Linux

PHP/Hack

Java

Job description

About the Team

The Slackbot team is at the forefront of a strategic initiative to make Slack the primary interface for AI-powered work — establishing Slackbot as the on-ramp to AI and the singular gateway to a company's collective knowledge. We build the intelligent search, automation, and foundational capabilities that make Slackbot delightful, trustworthy, and performant at scale.
We own quality, developer experience, and platform foundations for Slackbot: what works today keeps working tomorrow. We measure success by customer outcomes — we do whatever it takes to make Slackbot great.
We are a team of product engineers who deeply care about the user experience. We are seeking a product-driven backend engineer with strong intuition and experience who build systems and design APIs with the end user in mind.

The Opportunity

As a Staff Backend Product Engineer, you will be instrumental in designing, building, and owning the systems and APIs that directly shape Slackbot's product experience — from intelligent search and third-party data integrations to the platform foundations that let Slackbot scale across millions of users. You will ensure these systems are scalable, highly performant, and precisely tailored to real user needs, all while making smart trade-offs between speed, cost, and user experience. If you are a collaborative engineer who understands that simplicity and reliability are carefully calculated aspects of system design, this is the role for you.

What You Will Be Doing:

• Conceptualize and Build: Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Designers, and other Backend/Frontend Engineers to brainstorm, conceptualize, and build new, high-impact features for Slackbot's large and rapidly growing user base.

• Drive Search & Intelligence: Contribute to the systems that make Slackbot smarter about finding and surfacing the right information, across any connected source.

• Deliver High-Quality Results: Contribute heavily to team projects that have a significant, measurable impact on the business and the user experience.

• System Ownership: Actively own team features or core systems, defining their long-term health and roadmap while improving the health of surrounding integration systems.

• Operational Excellence: Assist our skilled support and operations teams in triaging and resolving complex production issues.

• Mentorship and Standards: Mentor other engineers, provide thoughtful and deep code reviews, and drive improvements in engineering standards, tooling, and processes across the team.

What You Should Have:

• 10+ years of professional experience building and shipping web applications with a focus on backend development.

• Proven experience with functional or imperative programming languages (e.g., PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, Go, or C). Expertise in our stack—PHP/Hack, Java, MySQL, and Linux—is a strong plus, but general familiarity with other common web languages and relational databases is a fine substitute.

• Experience building search infrastructure, large-scale APIs, or AI-powered systems is highly desirable.

• The ability to significantly contribute to technical architecture discussions and drive critical technical decisions across teams.

• A track record of writing understandable, testable code with a strong focus on maintainability.

• Solid computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, programming languages, distributed systems, and information retrieval.

• Strong Communication Skills: You can clearly explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, including designers, support, and product managers.