Backend Engineer – Fraud/Risk

Backend Engineer / Infrastructure Engineer (Senior)

Location: San Francisco, CA (in-office ~60 hrs/week; hybrid OK if long commute)

Position Type: Full-Time (Permanent)

Work Policy: Primarily in-person; relocation assistance $5k–$10k available

Start Timeline: ASAP – Urgent hire (fast interviews, contract signed within hours)

Compensation

• Base Salary: $130,000 – $210,000 (varies by interview performance, level, and location)
• Equity: Very generous and meaningful equity
• Notes: Competitive cash comp up to ~$200k with flexibility for stellar candidates

Tech environment

• Languages: Python, TypeScript, Elixir, Golang, Scala, Rust
• Databases: Cassandra, DynamoDB, BigTable, other NoSQL
• Infrastructure: Kafka, Pub/Sub, Kubernetes, containerized environments
• Focus: Distributed systems, real-time event streaming, vector databases, LLM infrastructure

About

A YC-backed, San Francisco–based startup building autonomous AI agents for fraud, compliance, trust & safety, and threat intelligence. They support enterprise customers including Fortune 500 companies and unicorns, applying AI to billions of daily events to reduce spam, scams, and abuse. The mission: rebuild an internet safe enough to be free again.

Why join

• YC-backed, Seed funded ($3.1M)
• 15x revenue growth in the past year
• Customers include Fortune 500 companies and top-tier unicorns
• Ship features in hours, not weeks
• Opportunities to build world-class features and user experiences

Role summary

This role focuses on developing fraud/risk detection infrastructure and scaling distributed systems. You’ll ship features with urgency, help build real-time processing systems, and expand the platform to new industries and enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

• Ship end-to-end features with ownership and urgency
• Scale infrastructure to billions of daily events and millions of users
• Develop distributed and real-time systems for fraud/risk use cases
• Build fundamentals for product scalability across industries
• Collaborate closely with engineering and product leaders

Must-have qualifications

• Expertise in distributed systems and real-time processing
• Proficiency with big data technologies (Cassandra, DynamoDB, BigTable, or other NoSQL)
• Experience with streaming technologies (Kafka, Pub/Sub, etc.)
• Familiarity with scaling vector databases and LLM-based systems
• Ability to own and deliver product features end-to-end

Must not have

• History of job hopping
• Significant employment gaps
• Consulting-heavy background
• Long-time manager/CTO returning to IC
• Primarily DevOps/infrastructure-only focus
• Background limited to non-complex projects (refactoring, dashboards, internal tools, testing)

Preferred qualifications

• Knowledge of rate-limiting infrastructure
• Experience in Kubernetes or containerized environments
• Experience in observability or data visualization products
• Growth-stage startup experience
• Strong credentials from top companies or top schools
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