Staff Software Engineer, Backend Platform

Harvey; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 231,000 - 340,000; Full time

Job summary

Harvey in San Francisco is seeking an experienced Backend Platform Engineer to help build and operate the cohesive backend platform powering our GenAI‑native services. You will design shared foundations, libraries, and patterns that let product teams ship reliably and safely.

You’ll collaborate across teams, implement async I/O, streaming, observability, and provide strong defaults with clear documentation so engineers move fast.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience in backend systems or internal platforms.
• Strong proficiency in Python and backend fundamentals (APIs, data stores, concurrency).
• Experience with Flask/FastAPI and microservices architectures.
• Familiarity with caching, messaging, and database tech for high performance.
• Proven ability to write well-tested code and use CI to ensure reliability.
• Excellent collaboration and communication across teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Harvey’s internal backend frameworks and libraries.
• Create APIs, service templates, and versioned interfaces for new services.
• Adopt async I/O and streaming patterns to improve performance and scalability.
• Design domain-specific abstractions for authorization, streaming, and data governance.
• Embed observability with tracing, metrics, and automated tests.
• Collaborate with Model Infrastructure to support GenAI‑native apps.
• Work with DevEx and Infra teams to integrate platforms into deployment pipelines.
• Gather feedback from product engineers and improve defaults and documentation.

Skills

Python

Backend development

APIs

Distributed systems

Caching

Messaging

Unit testing

CI

Collaboration

Communication

Tools

Flask/FastAPI

Kafka

Redis

SQL/NoSQL

Vector databases

Job description

Why Harvey

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.

Why Harvey

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.

This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. We have strong product-market fit and world-class investor support. We’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched.

Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job’s Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we’d love to build with you.

At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.

Role Overview

As a Backend Platform Engineer at Harvey, you will help build and operate the cohesive backend platform that all our services run on. You’ll design and implement shared frameworks and libraries that abstract common concerns, improve developer experience, and raise the baseline for reliability and performance across all teams.

Your mission aligns with our platform charter: create “a shared foundation that enables product teams to ship reliable, observable, and performant experiences quickly and safely.” By centralizing common work, you’ll let product engineers focus on shipping features rather than re‑inventing the wheel. This is a high‑impact role where the code you write and the systems you build will amplify the productivity and quality of engineering across the entire company.

If you’re excited about building foundational systems, solving cross‑cutting technical challenges, and enabling others to move faster with confidence, we’d love to hear from you.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and maintain Harvey’s internal backend frameworks and libraries that provide common capabilities (API routing, service lifecycle management, caching and messaging primitives, error handling interfaces, etc.), so product teams don’t have to reinvent them
• Create and improve APIs, service templates, and versioned interfaces that establish consistent patterns for building new services and features
• Introduce and champion modern backend architecture patterns like asynchronous I/O (asyncio) and streaming data processing, continually evolving our platform for better performance and scalability
• Design Harvey-specific abstractions and domain‑specific frameworks—covering cross‑cutting concerns (e.g., authorization, streaming) and areas like data governance and event processing—to provide product engineers with these capabilities out of the box
• Embed reliability and observability into the platform by building in tracing, metrics, and automated tests (shift‑left), ensuring services built on our foundation are robust and easy to monitor
• Collaborate with Model Infrastructure team to tackle challenges unique to GenAI‑native applications — such as supporting high‑throughput model inference, managing streaming and long‑running API interactions, and designing abstractions for retrieval, context handling, and prompt lifecycle
• Collaborate with the Developer Experience and Infrastructure teams (who own CI/CD pipelines, build tools, and release infrastructure) to integrate our platform components seamlessly into the deployment and monitoring ecosystem
• Work closely with product engineering teams to gather feedback, evangelize best practices, and make the “paved road” approach a reality — providing strong defaults and clear documentation so teams can move fast with confidence

What You Have

• 8+ years of software engineering experience (post‑BS/MS), including building scalable backend systems or internal developer platforms
• Proficiency in Python (or similar languages) and deep knowledge of backend development fundamentals (APIs, data stores, concurrency, distributed systems)
• Hands‑on experience with web frameworks and service architectures (e.g. Flask/FastAPI, Bounded context services, microservices) and an understanding of designing clean, versioned APIs
• Familiarity with caching, messaging, and database technologies (Redis, Kafka, SQL/NoSQL databases, Vector databases, etc.) and how to use them effectively for high performance and reliability
• A track record of writing high‑quality, well‑tested code and using tools (unit/integration testing, static typing, CI) to catch issues early and ensure reliability
• Strong problem‑solving skills and a passion for improving developer experience — you enjoy creating tools or frameworks that make other engineers more productive
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work across teams and incorporate feedback.
• Experience contributing to or maintaining internal libraries/frameworks is a plus.

Compensation Range

$231,000 - $340,000 USD

Depending on your location, an Applicant Privacy Notice may apply to you. You can find all of our Applicant Privacy Notices [here].

Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing [e-mail]