Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Hercules; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited AI token budget

Take what you need vacation policy

Healthcare, vision, and dental

Daily lunches, dinners and snacks in (

We guarantee you will do the best work

Job summary

Hercules is seeking a senior or staff level infrastructure engineer to help us build the future of AI software development in San Francisco. The role focuses on scaling and maintaining the infrastructure behind AI Agent, App Builder, App Hosting, and the broader Hercules Platform.

The ideal candidate will own system design, data modeling, API design, and code quality across a multi-tenant stack using TypeScript, React-based interfaces, containers, Postgres, Redis, and Temporal.

Qualifications

• Strong system design, architecture, data modeling, and API design.
• Write clean, maintainable code and work effectively in monorepos.
• Experience building scale-out, multi-tenant, distributed services.
• Track record of shipping changes that impact customers.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain infrastructure powering Hercules AI software stack.
• Support AI Agent, App Builder, App Hosting, and Platform components.
• Scale and optimize services to support 100s of thousands of apps/users.
• Collaborate across teams to improve reliability, observability, and performance.
• Apply AI-first approaches to improve developer workflows.

Skills

Software fundamentals

Code quality

Infrastructure

Product sense

Core stack TS/React/containers/Postgre

AI

Tools

Docker

Terraform

CDK

Job description

What are we looking for?

Hercules is looking for a senior or staff level infrastructure engineer to help us build the future of AI software development

What will you do?

You will build and maintain the infrastructure powering our

• AI Agent, the AI harness that enables anyone to build powerful full-stack applications

• App Builder, the interface that makes it ridiculously easy to build, preview, and deploy apps

• App Hosting, the backend that's required to scalably and reliably host 100s of thousands of apps

• SDK, the headless SaaS that users can integrate into their apps like Hercules Commerce, Hercules Auth, Hercules CMS, Hercules Files & Media, etc

• Platform, our enterprise-grade platform that supports 100s of thousands of users

What skills do we expect you to have?

We expect candidates to be incredibly strong across all of the following areas:

• Software fundamentals: system design, architecture, data modeling, and API design

• Code and codebase quality: write clean, maintainable code. Work effectively in monorepos

• Infrastructure: scale large, data-intensive, multi-tenant, distributed services

• Product sense: track record of independently shipping lots of changes that directly impact customers

• Our core stack: TypeScript, React, containers, Postgres, Redis, and Temporal

• AI: able to truly 10x your workflow by being on frontier of AI coding

What's Hercules' stack?

• Technologies: Typescript, React, AI SDK, Postgres, Redis, Clickhouse, Tailwind, IaC (CDK, Terraform), Docker, Otel, Hono, Drizzle ORM, Temporal

• Clouds: Cloudflare, AWS

• AI Models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google

What are Hercules' operating principles?

Hercules' operating principles guide how we make decisions every day. We take them very seriously. Most of the principles can be learned on the job, however, we do specifically filter for the following principles in our hiring process:

1. We ship. We ship fast, iterate, and correct mistakes quickly. Our bias for action speeds up our learning and delights our customers.

2. We strive for excellence. Doing things well is in our DNA. We have good taste. We get the details right. Our outputs are exceptionally simple and self-serve. We're proud of our work.

3. We are hungry. We are willing to work hard and break through walls to achieve the outcomes we want. We are willing to operate at any level to get things done.

Is Hercules in-office or remote?

Hercules founding team works in-office in San Francisco (Kearny and Bush). We have a very strong preference for in office. We are open to remote for exceptional candidates who are willing to 1) work in US time zones and 2) travel to the office regularly.

What are Hercules' benefits?

• Unlimited AI token budget

• Take what you need vacation policy

• Healthcare, vision, and dental

• Daily lunches, dinners and snacks in the office

• We guarantee you will do the best work of your career here

What's the compensation?

$100k-$300k + equity (variable based on seniority, equity, and location)