Lead Back End Developer

Senior Backend Lead Developer | AI Sales Platform | Early-Stage Startup

About the Opportunity:

The startup is an early-stage, high-potential startup building an AI-powered sales co-pilot with an existing product already in market. We're looking for a Lead Backend Developer who thrives in the zero-to-one stage — someone who has proven experience building products from the ground up and can architect, own, and scale backend systems independently.

This is not a role for someone looking to join an established team with clear processes. We need a hands-on technical leader with 5+ years of backend development experience, including significant experience in product development and system architecture from scratch. You'll be responsible for designing and implementing core systems, making critical technical decisions, and setting the foundation for our engineering culture.

Beyond the Code: As a lead developer in an early-stage startup, you'll need to understand the business side — not just write code. This means:

• Understanding customer needs and translating them into technical solutions
• Making trade-offs between speed, quality, and business priorities
• Communicating technical decisions in business terms
• Contributing to product strategy and roadmap discussions

What Makes This Role Unique:

• Early-stage impact: Shape the product and tech stack from day one
• Full ownership: Lead entire systems from architecture to deployment
• AI-first product: Work with cutting-edge LLM technology and agent orchestration
• Fast-paced environment: Build fast, iterate faster, and see immediate impact

If you're energized by the challenge of building a product from scratch, making high-impact technical decisions, understanding the business context behind every feature, and working in a lean, high-ownership environment — this is for you.

About the Startup:

AI-powered sales co-pilot that equips revenue teams with real-time intelligence and coaching before, during, and after every customer interaction. It connects to the sales rep's calendar, CRM, email, and conferencing tools to automatically generate pre-call research briefs, provide live in-call coaching and objection handling, and produce actionable post-call summaries that sync directly back into the CRM.

Unlike post-mortem analytics platforms (e.g., Gong or Chorus), Othello acts in the moment — guiding reps during live conversations to improve close rates, shorten deal cycles, and elevate team-wide performance.

Mission: To empower every salesperson with an intelligent assistant that thinks faster than they can — helping them show up prepared, stay sharp during calls, and close with confidence.

Vision: To redefine sales enablement by merging human intuition with AI intelligence — creating a world where every sales conversation becomes a data-driven, high-performance opportunity.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain backend systems using Python (FastAPI preferred)
• Architect clean, modular, and maintainable codebases following Clean Architecture and Domain-Driven Design principles
• Build and scale LLM-based services — prompt orchestration, RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and intelligent API interactions
• Integrate with third-party APIs (e.g. Google, Slack, Salesforce, Supabase, Tavus, etc.) and manage auth, data flow, and observability
• Develop internal SDKs, background jobs, and async task pipelines (GCP Cloud Tasks, Redis, Celery)
• Write production-grade code with full test coverage and CI/CD readiness
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, frontend, and AI research teams to deliver high-impact features
• Lead or co-own full systems A→Z — from architecture and data modeling to deployment, monitoring, and iteration

Requirements:

Must Have:

• Proven mastery of Clean Code, SOLID principles, and Design Patterns
• 5+ years of professional backend experience
• Significant experience building products and systems from scratch
• Expert in Python (typing, async, testing, best practices)
• Experience designing and scaling RESTful APIs
• Skilled in MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL, schema design, and optimization
• Strong background in cloud infrastructure (GCP, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks)
• Ability to build entire systems A–Z independently: architecture → implementation → deployment → monitoring
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, high-ownership environment — where accountability, self-direction, and bias-to-action are expected
• Business acumen — ability to understand customer needs and make technical decisions in business context

Nice to Have:

• Experience with LangChain, LLM agent orchestration, or multi-model inference flows
• Demonstrated experience with LLM systems (OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, custom orchestration)
• Familiar with RAG, embeddings, and vector stores (Weaviate, Pinecone, FAISS)

Culture & Mindset Fit

• Extreme ownership: Treats every system as their own — from uptime to UX
• Fast-paced execution: Thrives in environments where priorities evolve and velocity matters
• System builder mentality: Enjoys architecting complete pipelines, not just endpoints
• Craftsmanship: Writes clean, modular, and future-proof code
• Curiosity: Digs deep into new AI tools, APIs, and patterns
• Accountability: Proactive communication, end-to-end delivery, no babysitting needed
• Collaboration: Works closely with product, design, and AI teams — concise, respectful, outcome-oriented