Member of Technical Staff (Full Time/SFO, CA/Onsite/USA)

Job Title: Member of Technical Staff

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite)

Job Type: Full Time/Permanent

Visa: Full Time/USC/GC/Etc..

The company: a YC-backed AI company automating consumer lending. Over $1 billion in payments processed, ~$6M revenue this year, real-time AI voice running inside top-10 US mortgage lenders. This hire architects and owns the core systems: sub-700ms latency, event-driven architecture, systems that improve with every customer interaction. The archetype is the engineer who walks in, has an opinion on how it should be built, and starts rebuilding it.

Requirements

3+ years professional engineering, strong Python fundamentals

Has personally architected production backends, not just shipped inside someone else's stack

Deep understanding of distributed systems, reliability, fault tolerance

Excellent database design and performance optimization

Kubernetes, event-driven architecture, parallel processing

Cracked with AI tooling: Claude, Cursor or Codex daily

Background

Distributed systems / low-latency backend at high-bar companies (AWS, Palantir Foundry, Databricks, Snowflake)

AI or voice infrastructure (Deepgram, Cartesia, ElevenLabs, Retell, Vapi, Twilio infra)

Ex-YC founding engineers with real backend depth

Nice-to-Have

Sub-second latency systems: voice AI, HFT, ad-serving, real-time bidding

Compliance-heavy production systems (FDCPA, RESPA, TILA, HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI)

Who Will Thrive Here

A builder with strong opinions on architecture and the bias to defensibly rebuild what is wrong

Someone who figures things out in messy, high-velocity environments

Someone who wants to set engineering culture, not inherit it

Fully in office, SF, 5 days a week; relocation possible. H-1B transfer and TN are fine, O-1 works, OPT is a hard no.