Staff Backend Software Engineer

Trellis; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative startup is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to enhance their Real-Time Bidding capabilities. This role offers a unique blend of product engineering and machine learning, focusing on backend systems, service integration, and MLOps. Join a dynamic team where your contributions will directly shape the future of technology in the insurance sector. With a fully remote work environment, competitive compensation, and a culture that emphasizes speed and collaboration, this is an opportunity to make a significant impact while working with cutting-edge technologies. If you're ready to tackle complex challenges and drive growth, this role is for you.

Benefits

Unlimited vacation time

100% employer-paid health insurance

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)

401(k) retirement plan

Bonuses and equity opportunities

Budget for home office equipment

Quarterly team bonding events

Qualifications

• 7+ years in software engineering with backend and ML experience.
• Expertise in Python and GCP for cloud-native systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead backend feature development for RTB systems.
• Integrate ML models and optimize data pipelines.

Skills

Python

Machine Learning

Backend Systems Development

FastAPI

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

MLOps

Docker

Kubernetes

Data Processing

Communication Skills

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Pub/Sub

Cloud SQL

Redis

Job description

Trellis is a profitable, fast-growing Series A startup backed by top investors like General Catalyst, QED, NYCA, and Amex Ventures.

Our mission: make shopping for home and auto insurance faster, smarter, and easier for everyday Americans. Powered by ML and GenAI, we help people find better insurance — saving them time, money, and stress.

We’re fully remote, built for speed, and led by a third-time fintech founder with a track record of building public companies.

If you move fast, take ownership, and care about your craft, you’ll thrive here.

About the Role

Trellis is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to advance our Real-Time Bidding (RTB) capabilities. You’ll join a nimble and driven team, playing a pivotal role in shaping the future of our product, architecture, and company.

This role uniquely blends product engineering with machine learning expertise. Your primary focus will be on leading, designing, building, and scaling the backend features of our RTB system – including service integration (FastAPI), database management, and MLOps components. This will be complemented by developing, deploying, and iterating on machine learning models and features that power our bidding services.

You will be responsible for integrating new automation products into the RTB services and the ML models they serve, utilizing Python, Kubernetes, and core GCP managed services (GKE, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, BigQuery, Vertex AI, etc.). If you excel at solving complex scaling challenges (aiming for 10x growth!), have deep experience building reliable cloud-native systems, and are interested in applied machine learning, join our fast-paced team and define the future of our technology.

This is a fully remote position, based in the US or Canada, reporting directly to the Head of RTB, Thomas Boquet.

What You’ll Do

1. Collaborate closely with business stakeholders and other engineers to deliver impactful solutions.
2. Integrate services and product features with databases (Cloud SQL, Redis) and messaging queues (Pub/Sub).
3. Lead the development of our MLOps tools for ML models.
4. Build and optimize large-scale data processing pipelines for feature extraction and data transformation using BigQuery and Dataflow.
5. Train, evaluate, deploy, and monitor machine learning models on Vertex AI to improve bidding performance.
6. Stay fast and focused, balancing speed, performance, and scalability to deliver impact.

What You’ll Need

1. A minimum of 7 years of professional software engineering experience, demonstrating growth and expertise in backend systems development and machine learning engineering.
2. Strong proficiency in Python; experience with FastAPI is a plus.
3. Deep understanding and practical experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including data preprocessing, feature engineering, model training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring in production.
4. Experience with MLOps principles and practices.
5. Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
6. A pragmatic, 'get it done' mindset balancing speed, performance, and scalability.
7. Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Trellis is a fantastic place to work

Join a talented, passionate team:

• Flat, collaborative, transparent culture; get in at the ground floor and be a true business partner
• Opportunities for growth and development within your role and across the organization
• Competitive compensation at the 75th percentile
• 100% remote work environment
• Quarterly team bonding events

Trellis additionally offers competitive benefits:

• Unlimited vacation time
• 100% employer-paid Platinum-tier health insurance for employees, 65% for dependents
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Bonuses and equity opportunities
• Budget for home office equipment