71,871 Backend Engineer jobs in the United States

• Design, architect, and implement robust APIs and services using Node.js, PostgreSQL, and Redis
• Optimize complex SQL queries and schemas to ensure lightning-fast performance across large datasets
• Tackle high-scale engineering challenges to ensure reliability and efficiency under heavy traffic
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, and leadership teams on backend features
• Proactively identify and resolve technical debt; lead refactoring projects to future-proof our stack
• Participate in team standups, code reviews, and deployment processes
• Mentor and support other engineers, helping to elevate team-wide technical excellence
• Take ownership of projects and drive initiatives from concept to production

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience
• Strong experience with Node.js and PostgreSQL (or equivalent relational databases)
• Strong SQL skills - able to write, debug, and optimize complex queries on large datasets
• Experience working on high-volume, consumer-facing platforms
• Solid understanding of backend architecture, distributed systems, and scalability principles
• Experience with DevOps practices and cloud infrastructure (preferably Google Cloud or AWS), including CI/CD, monitoring, and infrastructure as code
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a self-driven, ownership mentality
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills

• Experience in the travel, marketplace, or e-commerce space
• Experience scaling systems to millions of daily users
• Experience building and deploying machine learning models using Vertex AI or similar platforms (e.g., SageMaker, Azure ML)
• Contributions to open-source projects or tech communities

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and develop scalable and reliable backend services and APIs that power our platform.
• Take ownership of critical components of our system, from conception to deployment and maintenance.
• Practice quality assurance best practices including unit and integration testing.
• Implement robust authentication and authorization mechanisms to ensure data security and privacy.
• Optimize data processing pipelines and storage solutions.
• Integrate third-party services and data sources seamlessly into our platform.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve issues related to infrastructure and operations to ensure maximum uptime and reliability.
• Continuously evaluate and implement best practices, tools, and technologies to enhance the scalability, reliability, and maintainability of our systems.

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science/Engineering, or 3+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Proven experience in backend development, with proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Python, Java, or Go.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP).
• Experience with authentication/authorization protocols and mechanisms (e.g., OAuth, JWT).
• Familiarity with relational and non-relational databases, along with expertise in data modeling and database management.
• Excellent problem-solving skills with a pragmatic and results-driven approach.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup environment with a high degree of autonomy and accountability.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in cross-functional teams.

• Experience with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Python, Pydantic, FastAPI, and SQLAlchemy.
• Experience with multi-region cloud computing deployments.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
• Prior experience in a startup or fast-growing environment.

• Innovative: We're set to bring AI to the masses by introducing technology designed to improve every interaction.
• Massive Impact: AI's greatest impact will be on the ability to allow people to do more, taking away mundane tasks and allowing them to focus on what matters the most.
• Growth Opportunities: Read AI is the fastest growing AI-copilot and meeting notetaker in history, and is on pace to be one of the fastest growing consumer AI companies in the world, adding more than 1MM new customers every month. The company raised Series A and B in 2024, and was noted as a Top Company To Watch in 2025 by Inc Magazine.
• Leadership: Learn more about CEO and Co-Founder David Shim in this Fortune Good Life profile from July 2025; CTO and Co-Founder Rob Williams was recently anointed as one of the most disruptive leaders in AI; and Co-Founder and VP Data Science Elliott Waldron goes behind-the-scenes on our patents and models in this tech brief.
• Collaborative Culture: Work in a supportive and collaborative environment with a diverse and talented team.

• Collaborate directly with company leadership to shape technical direction and strategy.
• Design, build, and optimize backend services, APIs, and real-time data infrastructure.
• Work on cutting-edge AI and language model integration, ensuring low-latency, high-reliability performance.
• Lead projects end-to-end, from architecture through deployment.
• Engage with users to understand pain points and continuously improve the product.

• 3-10 years of professional software engineering experience building production-grade backend systems.
• Strong expertise in Python and SQL databases (Postgres preferred).
• Experience deploying and managing services in cloud environments (AWS preferred).
• Track record of high ownership and driving projects from idea to production.
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving, early-stage startup environment.

• Experience with Django or similar web frameworks.
• Familiarity with WebRTC or real-time streaming technologies.
• Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure or large language models.
• Prior startup or founder experience.

• Salary range: 160,000 - 220,000 (depending on experience)
• Meaningful equity package
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• Generous PTO and flexible time off
• Career growth opportunities in a high-velocity environment with strong internal promotion focus

• Build and maintain backend services and infrastructure that support our fleet management platform.
• Collaborate with design, customer experience, and sales teams, as well as key customers, to define, design, and ship new backend features.
• Work on core infrastructure, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance across our systems.
• Own the deployment and monitoring of backend services, ensuring high availability and uptime.
• Identify and address infrastructure bottlenecks, scaling issues, and operational challenges as fleets use our software in their day-to-day operations.
• Help drive the technical direction of our backend architecture while balancing trade-offs between development speed and system maintainability.
• Understand our customers' needs and the electric fleet market intimately to make informed product decisions.

• You have a passion for the future of transportation.
• You enjoy working on both backend features and infrastructure, and can confidently move between these areas.
• You have strong problem-solving skills with an emphasis on scalability, reliability, and performance.
• You have experience working with cloud infrastructure (e.g., GCP, AWS).
• You have experience with Go and/or Python.
• You have a customer-first mindset and are interested in building robust systems that help fleets operate efficiently.
• You're a self-starter who takes initiative and drives projects to completion.
• You're excited about working in a fast-paced and dynamic startup environment.
• You're a team player, with the ability to collaborate effectively with a distributed team.

• GCP
• MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, and more
• Go
• Python
• React, Typescript

• Think from zero . Whiteboard the concept in the morning and demo it by evening.
• Own the stack . Backend, frontend, model orchestration, observability-whatever removes friction between idea and shipped product.
• Bridge research and delight. Sit beside scientists, translate breakthroughs into polished consumer experiences, and push them to production in days, not quarters.
• Define the bar. Establish the engineering, design, and reliability standards that every future hire will follw.
• Move markets. Your features won't live in a sandbox-they'll redefine how everyday people trust and collaborate with AI.

• Craft end-to-end experiences: Design, code, and ship full-stack features-Python, TypeScript, Postgres, GPU infra-whatever it takes.
• Design MCP schemas: Create flexible, extensible JSON-based models that represent property context, room types, policies, branding, and more.
• Integrate core booking systems: Build robust connectors to PMS, CRM, messaging platforms, and booking engines
• Build internal and partner-facing APIs: Develop secure, scalable APIs that ingest, structure, and serve context to downstream AI agents.
• Engineer for trust: Single-digit-ms paths, sandboxed execution, telemetry everywhere-four nines or it's broken.
• Invent agentic primitives: APIs, eval harnesses, and safety guardrails that let wild research ship to millions.
• Listen, iterate, delight: Sit with users, absorb the pain, and turn feedback into joy fast.

• More than 5 yrs years of professional software engineering experience
• Strong backend fundamentals: REST API architecture, distributed systems, cloud deployment
• Proficiency with JavaScript, React, and other web technologies
• Proficiency with a backend language (we use Py C. B thon)
• Some experience with relational databases like Postgres/MySQL
• Deep experience integrating 3rd-party APIs and building data abstraction layers (bonus: hotel/hospitality tech exposure)
• Working knowledge of LLM pipelines, embeddings, and context windows (LangChain, OpenAI Assistants API, etc.)
• Proven ability to thrive in fast-growing, product-driven companies by effectively navigating loosely defined tasks and managing competing priorities or deadlines.

• Familiarity with travel tech (e.g. Mews, SynXis, Oracle Opera, Cloudbeds)
• Experience designing or managing structured knowledge graphs or JSON schemas
• Experience with LLMs, prompt engineering, or function calling
• Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who has built a product from scratch is a plus
• Interest in AI/ML (direct experience not required)

1. A link-or 60-sec video-of something you built and why it matters.
2. Your resume or LinkedIn.
3. Two sentences on the hardest problem you've cracked.

We're building a gamified developer platform empowering tens of thousands of coders to compete in exciting software engineering challenges - all while pushing the frontier of LLMs!

As a Backend Engineer, you'll become part of a passionate, fast moving team dedicated to solving challenging technical problems, designing engaging gamification experiences, and shaping the foundations to support the collective effort of developers worldwide.
What You'll Do

• Lead technical discussions, guide architectural decisions, and identify opportunities for improvement across backend systems
• Architect robust infrastructure to efficiently handle high volumes of user interactions, data processing, and real-time competition data
• Collaborate closely with frontend engineers and product managers to deliver seamless user experiences
• Optimize backend performance, reliability, and scalability to support rapid growth and evolving product requirements
• Establish backend engineering best practices, including code quality, testing, observability, and documentation

• 3+ years of experience designing, building, and maintaining scalable backend systems and APIs
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, asynchronous processing, and event-driven architectures
• Experience designing APIs and backend services using Go
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and services on AWS
• Proficiency with IaaC tools (e.g., Terraform) and CI/CD pipelines
• Expertise designing relational database schemas, optimizing SQL queries, and managing database performance and integrity
• Excellent collaboration and proactive communication skills

• Experience with Kubernetes and orchestration of containerized applications
• Knowledge of observability and monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana)
• Experience designing and scaling data pipelines to handle large volumes of data efficiently
• Worked with secure code execution environments and sandboxing techniques
• Interest or experience in gamification or developer-focused platforms

• A mbition for Excellence
  
  • We work backwards from the way things should be and constantly measure our progress against it
• C ustomer Centricity
  
  • We obsess over the problems our customers face and relentlessly innovate to find the best solutions
• Intellectual H onesty
  
  • We embrace hard conversations and actively seek the truth
• I ntentionality
  
  • We exhibit good judgment and are thoughtful about tradeoffs
• E xtreme Ownership
  
  • We take pride in our work and never say the words "not my problem"
• Ve locity / Bias for Action
  
  • We don't leave for tomorrow what can be done today

• Design and implement key backend, integration platform subsystems
  
  • Understand business goals, product and technology strategies and customer requirements and implement supporting backend and integration platform subsystems to achieve them
  • Adapt and evolve systems and plans to implement newly identified design partner and customer requirements
  • Adapt and evolve systems to implement non-functional requirements (compliance, security, enterprise integration etc.)
• Laying down infrastructure foundations for growth and scalability
  
  • Prepare Cogent for future headcount, customer, and data growth by working with a team to design and build an infrastructure that will scale and that achieves requirements in the areas of product capabilities, non-functional needs (reliability, security, disaster recovery, etc.).
• Help create a robust engineering culture at Cogent
  
  • Onboard, support and uplevel future team members
  • Participate in, provide feedback on, and iterate interview process as we scale the team up
  • Actively contribute to Engineering Excellence, Operational Excellence and Recruiting initiatives

• 5+ years of professional experience as a hands-on engineer and technical leader, overseeing and contributing to multiple backend systems and infrastructure projects
• Expertise in architecting, developing, and scaling backend systems, including both stateless and stateful architectures, to support high-performance, enterprise-level applications
• Proven experience with distributed systems, microservices, and serverless architectures, ensuring robustness, scalability, and fault tolerance
• Strong knowledge of backend programming languages such as Python, Go or similar, with a deep understanding of concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization
• Experience with API design and implementation (RESTful and/or gRPC), integrating with frontend systems, data platforms, and third-party services
• Solid experience with containerization, orchestration, and deployment technologies like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines in multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)

About the Role

We're hiring a backend engineer to design and build scalable, performant, and secure systems that power our products from early concepts through production scale. You'll work across services, APIs, and infrastructure, making the right tradeoffs to deliver quickly while laying the groundwork for longterm growth.

You'll collaborate closely with product and fullstack teams (and other crossfunctional partners), applying a deep understanding of backend systems and enough endtoend context-from client/edge to cloud-to guide technical decisions that best serve the product and team.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. This role is fully onsite 5 days in office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Architect, build, and maintain highperformance, secure backend systems.

• Design APIs, data models, and infrastructure to support evolving product needs.

• Balance nearterm velocity with longterm maintainability and scalability.

• Collaborate with crossfunctional teams to ensure cohesive, endtoend solutions.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 7+ years professional software engineering experience, with a focus on backend systems.

• Proven track record building and scaling systems from early stage to production scale.

• Proficient with Python and Go, plus familiarity with a range of serverside technologies.

• Strong grasp of system design, performance optimization, and security best practices.

• Ability to reason about fullstack tradeoffs from client/edge through cloud infrastructure.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with distributed systems and cloud architectures.

• Background in instrumentation, analytics, and performance tuning.

• Familiarity with edgetocloud integrations or AI services.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI's Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $380K - $460K

River Healths mission is to be the best health plan for hourly workers by making healthcare affordable, reliable, and easy to use with the tap of a button.

Here is what makes River Health different:

1. Complexity & Cost
We started River Health because healthcare is too expensive and more complex than it should be. We are building a new system that connects you directly to your healthcare provider and brings transparency to the billing process.

2. Patient Experience
Accessing healthcare should be stress-free, if not enjoyable. We invest resources into improving the care delivery process to delight our members.

We're seeking an experienced Backend Engineer to build and maintain our cloud-native services. You'll work with our infrastructure, data, and frontend teams to create robust, scalable systems that power our healthcare platform.

• Design and implement serverless microservices using Go and Python
• Manage and optimize AWS RDS databases and data flows
• Create and maintain secure, performant APIs
• Implement robust error handling and monitoring solutions
• Design and optimize database schemas
• Ensure HIPAA compliance across all systems
• Develop and maintain data processing pipelines
• Collaborate with frontend teams to define API contracts
• Participate in system architecture discussions and technical planning

• 5+ years experience with Go or Python in production environments
• Strong experience with AWS serverless architecture (Lambda, API Gateway)
• Proficiency with AWS RDS and database optimization
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs
• Strong understanding of security best practices
• Experience with version control (Git) and CI/CD pipelines
• Knowledge of monitoring and logging best practices
• Understanding of distributed systems concepts

• Experience working with healthcare data or PHI
• Familiarity with HIPAA compliance requirements
• Experience with multiple AWS services (S3, SQS, SNS, CloudWatch)
• Knowledge of container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Background in healthcare technology
• Experience with event-driven architectures
• Knowledge of GraphQL

• Competitive salary and equity package
• Flexible PTO policy
• 401(k) matching
• Opportunity to solve complex healthcare challenges

• Minneapolis, MN (Preferred) or Remote (US-based)