Senior Software Engineer, Backend

Company Description

Othello is building at the frontier of real-time generative AI, helping sales teams make better high-stakes decisions in the moments that matter most, while a customer conversation is still happening. Our platform is used by leading sales organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, to deliver live intelligence before, during, and after meetings. We’re an early-stage startup that moves extremely fast, gives people real ownership, and is built for people who want to solve hard technical problems at the edge of what’s possible

We’re hiring a Backend Engineer with strong AI systems fluency to help build and scale production systems at the intersection of backend infrastructure, applied AI, and DevOps.

This role is for someone who moves extremely fast, covers a lot of ground, and can build high-quality systems under real execution pressure. We want a hands-on engineer with strong backend fundamentals, extensive DevOps experience, and a real understanding of how modern AI systems work in practice. Not a pure AI engineer, and not a traditional backend engineer disconnected from AI. This is a builder who can operate across backend systems, infrastructure, and AI-powered workflows.

What you’ll do

• Build and scale backend systems that power AI products in production

• Design and implement APIs, services, pipelines, and core infrastructure

• Develop AI-powered backend capabilities using LLMs, agents, retrieval, and tool-based workflows

• Own reliability, deployment, observability, and performance across backend systems

• Turn ambiguous problems into fast, practical, production-ready systems

• Move quickly across backend, infrastructure, and AI implementation work as needed

What we’re looking for

• At least 5 years of experience building in production.

• Strong working knowledge of LLMs and how they behave in real systems

• Experience building with LLM APIs, agent workflows, prompt systems, retrieval pipelines, and structured outputs

• Ability to build basic to moderately complex AI agents and backend systems around them

• Strong architecture instincts across services, queues, databases, caching, async jobs, and system design

• Strong coding ability and very high engineering velocity

• Ability to move fast without sacrificing quality, reliability, or maintainability

• Deep problem-solving ability and strong engineering judgment

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and figuring things out fast

• High ownership, strong work ethic, and strong execution standards

You should be the kind of person who

• Can sprint through large amounts of work without becoming sloppy

• Understands backend architecture, infrastructure, and practical AI implementation

• Is comfortable owning systems from code to deployment to production reliability

• Knows when to build clean abstractions and when to move pragmatically

• Can take a messy problem and turn it into a working system quickly

• Cares about speed, quality, and actually shipping

What matters most

We are looking for a fast, sharp, highly capable builder who can operate across backend engineering, infrastructure, and applied AI. Someone who can own a lot, move with urgency, and build robust systems quickly.

This role is for someone who combines backend strength, DevOps depth, AI fluency, and exceptional execution speed.