Staff Engineer, AI-Driven Backend & Systems Lead

Kickstart Seed Fund; Durham, Northern (NC, KY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

PTO 3 weeks+ annually

Free therapy coverage

Medical, Dental, Vision + HSA

401(k) match

Annual company gathering

Holiday shutdown Christmas

Disability coverage

Parental Leave 8–16 weeks

Job summary

SonderMind is hiring a Staff Engineer to own end-to-end features across backend services, agentic frameworks, AI Pipelines, and front ends. You’ll work with minimal supervision, troubleshoot complex problems, and help shape our microservices architecture.

You’ll design scalable services, optimize databases, and mentor engineers while collaborating closely with product, design, and QA. Prior ML model work is not required but appreciated.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building web services or full-stack applications.
• Strong hands-on experience in Ruby/Rails, TypeScript/Node, Python or similar backends.
• Deep understanding of APIs, PostgreSQL, and some performance tuning.
• Proven ability to balance short-term delivery with long-term technical investments and continuous improvement of quality.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable Ruby/Rails, TypeScript/Node, and Python services and RESTful or gRPC APIs that integrate with agentic GenAI systems.
• Optimize MongoDB and PostgreSQL queries and service performance.
• Collaborate with cross-functional squads to define requirements and deliver features.
• Work on AI Agents, MCP servers and various AI-enabled tools and frameworks; adapt to evolving technologies.
• Identify and drive architectural and toolchain improvements.
• Mentor junior engineers (code reviews, pair programming).
• Serve as a technical lead for complex projects balancing scope and risk.

Skills

Ruby/Rails

TypeScript/Node

Python

APIs

Performance tuning

Tools

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

LangChain/LangGraph

GitHub Copilot

Job description

SonderMind is hiring a Staff Engineer to own end-to-end features across backend services, agentic frameworks, AI Pipelines, and front ends. You’ll work with minimal supervision, troubleshoot complex problems, and help shape our microservices architecture.

You’ll design scalable services, optimize databases, and mentor engineers while collaborating closely with product, design, and QA. Prior ML model work is not required but appreciated.