Open Talent · 10 hours ago
Founding Backend Engineer (Node.js / Python / AWS / FinTech) / $260,000 + equity / A* Team / NYC (on-site)
NYC Metro Area
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
$260K/yr - $260K/yrOpen Talent is a venture-backed AI infrastructure startup assembling its founding team in New York. They are seeking a Founding Backend Engineer who will build the core backend of a real-time decision platform, owning API design, data pipelines, and system architecture.
Human Resources
Hiring Manager
Sufyan Bashir
Responsibilities
Build the core backend of a real-time decision platform
Own API design, data pipelines, system architecture, and infrastructure choices
Ship services with clear interfaces, strong monitoring, and fault tolerance
Optimize performance across the stack - from request times to DB queries
Collaborate tightly with frontend and product to shape features from idea to ship
Define best practices for backend engineering from the ground up
Help shape engineering culture, standards, and hiring from day one
Qualification
Required
Built systems that scale
Handled data flows, API contracts, infra, and uptime under pressure
Designed reliable, composable backends that power real products
Full technical ownership
Built 0→1 systems in fast-paced, high-ownership environments
Designed and implemented clean, low-latency REST and event-driven APIs
Handled structured and unstructured data with PostgreSQL, S3, or streams
Thought about availability, observability, and infrastructure as code
Optimized for cold starts, throughput, latency, and cost
Comfortable containerizing, deploying, and tuning services in Docker + K8s
Used cloud-native primitives and built with AWS-first thinking
Debugged a flaky pod, a noisy query, or a dropped message
Thrived with end-to-end ownership and loved building things that work
Built the core backend of a real-time decision platform
Owned API design, data pipelines, system architecture, and infrastructure choices
Shipped services with clear interfaces, strong monitoring, and fault tolerance
Optimized performance across the stack - from request times to DB queries
Collaborated tightly with frontend and product to shape features from idea to ship
Defined best practices for backend engineering from the ground up
Helped shape engineering culture, standards, and hiring from day one
Benefits
Equity
On-site 5 days in a focused engineering office, downtown NYC
Early ownership on a serious product with immediate use cases
Backing from proven operators who have built and scaled before
Clear direction, high standards, no micromanagement
Company
Open Talent
🚀 Recruiting elite-tier 0.1% AI/ML, GTM & software engineers in New York City, partnering exclusively with the most ambitious scale-ups from pre-seed through Series D.
City of London, GB
2-10 employeesFunding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase