Senior Engineer, Backend & AI Systems

Job Details • Senior Engineer, Backend & AI Systems (Contract) • Location: San Francisco, CA 94107 Hybrid) • Duration: 8/17/2026 to 11/13/2026 • Team: Incubator - VizWhiz Job Description • Building an AI-native data visualization creative platform, built to turn anyone into a confident data storyteller. Our app, which is in the early alpha stages, helps people go from raw data to compelling, publication-quality charts without needing to be a data scientist or designer. • We’re a small, fast-moving incubator team that ships production software and cares deeply about the craft. We’re looking for a senior backend engineer with a strong AI systems background to help us build the intelligence layer that makes our service feel like it actually understands data. You’ll work across our fluency engine, composition pipeline, and agentic infrastructure, and have a direct hand in how the product reasons about data and communicates with users. • We’re a small team with real ownership. The problems are genuinely hard, the feedback loop is short, and the work ships to real users inside one of the largest creative platforms in the world. What You’ll Work On • Design and evolve our GraphQL API and the services behind it using Node.js, Postgres, S3, Docker, and Kubernetes • Build and improve AI-powered features including chart recommendation, data fluency, narrative generation, and agentic workflows that act on user intent • Own the eval infrastructure by defining what “good” looks like for our AI systems, building LLM-as-judge pipelines, and driving quality improvements from signal • Work across our composer and fluency engines to translate user data and intent into visual output • Contribute to architecture decisions including schema design, data loading and processing patterns, and pipeline orchestration • Partner closely with frontend engineers and designers to ship full features end-to-end What We’re Looking For • 6+ years of backend engineering experience with strong TypeScript and Node.js fundamentals • Hands-on experience building with LLMs including prompt engineering, structured outputs, tool use, retrieval, caching strategies, and cost/latency tradeoffs • Experience with agentic architectures including multi-step reasoning, tool-calling agents, orchestration patterns, and related failure modes • Ability to design and maintain AI evaluation infrastructure to measure model quality and identify regressions • Strong software engineering fundamentals with the ability to write clear, well-typed, maintainable code • Experience moving quickly in an early-stage product environment with strong ownership and autonomy Bonus Points • Experience with LangSmith, LangFuse, or similar LLM observability tooling • Familiarity with React and willingness to contribute to frontend code • Prior experience building design-adjacent or creative tools products • Interest in data visualization and data storytelling Tech We Use • Node.js • TypeScript • GraphQL • Apollo • PostgreSQL • Drizzle ORM • Langchain • Vercel • Docker • Kubernetes • Nx monorepo • React 19 • Vite • Vitest • Storybook • AWS • Azure Compensation • Pay Rate: $70.42/hr Requisition ID: 37480346