About the Role

We are hiring Members of Technical Staff , internally referred to as Founding Engineers. The mandate is to architect and own the core systems that power real-time AI voice and compliance workflows for top-10 US mortgage lenders. Someone who's a little bit more infra / backend.

The archetype is the engineer who comes in, has an opinion on how the product should actually be built, and starts rebuilding it.

What You'll Own

- Architect and own core systems that power real-time AI voice and compliance workflows.

- Push performance boundaries , sub-700ms latency via event-driven architecture and parallel processing.

- Deploy, operate, and scale resilient systems using Kubernetes and distributed sub-systems.

- Build a self-improving AI system that improves with every customer interaction and human feedback.

- Ship fast, ship right , whiteboard design to live production in bank environments.

- Set engineering culture and best practices , code reviews, docs, architecture decisions.

Requirements

- 3+ years skilled engineering experience.

- Strong Python fundamentals.

- Strong backend + infrastructure depth , has personally architected production backends, not just shipped within someone else's stack.

- Deep understanding of distributed systems, reliability, fault tolerance.

- Excellent database design and performance optimization.

- Strong opinions on architecture with bias to defensibly rebuild what's wrong.

- Bias for ownership , figures things out in messy, high-velocity environments.

- SF-based or willing to relocate immediately , 5 days/week.

- Cracked with AI tooling , Claude / Cursor / Codex daily.

- Genuine interest in mortgage / lending space , documented failure mode.

- Visa: H-1B transfer OK, TN OK (no OPT; O-1 too slow).

Profile Tiers

Tier 1 , Distributed Systems / Low-Latency Backend at High-Bar Companies

- AWS distributed systems / low-latency teams

- Palantir Foundry infrastructure / platform teams

- Databricks, Snowflake compute layer / infra

- CockroachDB, MongoDB, Confluent, Vespa, Pinecone, Weaviate, Elastic, Clickhouse, Materialize, Neon, PlanetScale, Convex, Supabase infra

- Verkada ,



direct culture and technical match

Tier 2 , AI Infrastructure / Voice Infrastructure Engineers

- Anthropic Applied / Production Infra, OpenAI Solutions / Production Infra, Together AI, Fireworks AI, Modal, Replicate, Anyscale, Cohere infra

- Voice infra: Deepgram, Cartesia, ElevenLabs infra, Retell, Vapi, Bland, Air.ai, PolyAI, HappyRobot

- Twilio infra, Vonage infra

- Real-time / sub-second production systems

Tier 3 , Ex-YC Founding Engineers with Backend Depth

- YC founders and founding engineers of companies with real backend architecture.

- Especially data-intensive or infra-heavy YC products.

Tier 4 , Impressive Fast-Moving Startups with Real Infra

- Perplexity, Cursor, Vercel, Modal, Replicate infra teams

- Mercor, Weap, Sierra, Decagon, Glean, Cresta infra

Tier 5 , Compliance-Heavy Vertical AI Infrastructure

- Harvey, Eve, Spellbook , legal AI infrastructure

- Blend, Ocrolus, Truework, Snapdocs, Rocket Companies , mortgage / lending infra

Tier 6 , Big Tech Infrastructure with Zero-to-One Signal

Additional Requirements

- 3+ years professional engineering experience.

- Strong Python.

- Deep distributed systems, reliability, fault tolerance understanding.

- Excellent database design and performance optimization.

- Kubernetes production experience.

- Event-driven architecture, parallel processing.

- Sub-second latency systems experience.

- Strong opinions on architecture with defensible push-back ability.

- Bias for ownership in messy, high-velocity environments.

- SF-based or willing to relocate immediately.

- 5 days/week in-person.

- Cracked with AI tooling.

- Genuine interest in mortgage / lending space.

Candidate Scorecard

- 3+ years qualified engineering experience.

- Strong Python.





- Deep distributed systems, reliability, fault tolerance understanding.

- Excellent database design and performance optimization.

- Kubernetes production experience.

- Event-driven architecture, parallel processing.

- Sub-second latency systems experience.

- Strong opinions on architecture with defensible push-back ability.

- Bias for ownership in messy, high-velocity environments.

- SF-based or willing to relocate immediately.

- 5 days/week in-person.

- Cracked with AI tooling.

- Genuine interest in mortgage / lending space.

Required Candidate Q&A;

- Are you SF-based or willing to relocate immediately, and comfortable being in-person 5 days/week?

- What's your US work authorization status?

Green Flags

- AWS distributed systems / low-latency engineer.

- Palantir Foundry infrastructure.

- Verkada alumni , direct culture and technical match.

- Anthropic / OpenAI Production Infra / Together AI / Fireworks / Modal.

- Deepgram / Cartesia / ElevenLabs infra / Retell / Vapi , direct voice AI infra.

- HFT / quant infra (Two Sigma / Citadel / Jane Street / HRT / Jump).

- Ex-YC founding engineer with backend depth.

- Kubecon / AWS re talks, OSS distributed systems contributions.

- Prior compliance-heavy production systems (FDCPA / RESPA / TILA / HIPAA / SOC 2).

- Rebuilt production infra in prior role , documented rebuild story.

Red Flags

- Under 3 years without AWS distributed-systems exception.

- Pure ML researcher.

- Product engineer in disguise as backend.

- Passive / non-opinionated engineer.

- Consultant (TCS / Accenture / Infosys / Wipro / Cognizant).

- Oracle, Workday background.

- FAANG career-tracker without zero-to-one signal.

- Mission-misaligned , lending / mortgage bores them.

- AI-resistant.

- Overly senior (10+ years) with cadence incompatibility.

Ideal Companies

- Verkada

- AWS

- CockroachDB

- MongoDB

- Pinecone

- Cartesia

- Vapi

- Vercel

- Ironclad

Benefits & Perks

- 401(k) Match

- Lunch And Dinner Covered

- Standard Medical / Dental / Vision

- Relocation Support

📌 Member of Technical Staff (San)
🏢 The SeventhHire
📍 San