Senior Backend & AI Engineer

Employment Type: Full-time

Location: Remote (PST Timezone Preferred)

Experience: 5+ years

About the Role

We’re looking for a Senior Backend & AI Engineer who is highly hands-on, technically strong, and deeply experienced in building with AI.

This is an all-rounder engineering role for someone who can take ownership of a problem from technical design through development, testing, deployment, and iteration. You should be comfortable building robust backend systems while also working extensively with modern AI technologies.

We’re particularly interested in engineers who have experience in startups, high-growth environments, or fast-moving technology teams, where ownership, speed, and the ability to figure things out independently are essential.

What You’ll Do

- Design, build, and maintain robust backend systems and APIs
- Build and integrate AI-powered features, products, and workflows
- Work extensively with LLMs, AI APIs, agents, RAG, automation, and tool/function calling
- Design scalable databases, backend architectures, and services
- Integrate third-party APIs and external services
- Own features end-to-end, from architecture and development through testing and production
- Debug, optimize, and improve existing systems
- Use AI-assisted development tools extensively to improve engineering speed and productivity
- Evaluate emerging AI tools and technologies and determine where they can provide practical value
- Collaborate with product, engineering, and other teams as needed
- Work across the stack when required

What We’re Looking For

- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong backend engineering fundamentals
- Proven experience building APIs, backend services, databases, and integrations




- Significant hands-on experience with AI/LLM technologies
- Experience building production AI features, not simply experimenting with AI tools
- Strong familiarity with AI-assisted software development
- Experience with AI agents and agentic workflows
- Experience with RAG and vector databases
- Understanding of prompt engineering, structured outputs, and tool/function calling
- Ability to independently architect, build, test, deploy, and iterate on systems
- Solid problem-solving and engineering judgment
- Excellent communication skills
- Comfortable working with ambiguity and taking ownership of complex problems
- Startup or high-growth technology experience is strongly preferred

AI Experience Is Critical

AI should be a core part of how you work, not simply something you have experimented with.

You should be comfortable working with:

- LLM APIs and model integrations
- AI agents and agentic workflows
- RAG and vector databases
- AI automation
- Prompt engineering and structured outputs
- Tool/function calling
- AI coding assistants
- Production AI features
- AI model and tool evaluation
- AI-driven development workflows

We’re looking for someone who actively uses AI to build better software, move faster, and solve problems more effectively.

The Ideal Candidate

You’re an experienced, startup-minded engineer who can figure things out.

You can take a loosely defined problem, determine an appropriate architecture, build the solution, use AI to accelerate the process, test it properly, and get it into production without requiring constant supervision.

We value:

Engineering judgment • Speed • Ownership • Curiosity • Practical AI expertise

The original role specifically emphasizes end-to-end ownership, startup/high-growth experience, and an AI-first approach

📌 Artificial Intelligence Engineer (India)
🏢 Hey Recruiting
📍 India