Backend-leaning Product Engineer

About the role

Join a small, high-ownership product team as a backend-leaning product engineer focused on building real-world AI and automation products. This role matters because you'll own customer-facing features end-to-end, navigate messy integrations and legacy systems, and make product and engineering trade-offs with speed and strong judgment.

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end from design through shipping and iteration
• Make product and engineering decisions independently without heavy PM support
• Execute under pressure and deliver high-quality engineering results, not just plans
• Build and maintain backend systems, APIs, data models, and automation pipelines
• Integrate with external tools, legacy systems, and messy third-party services
• Design workflows and orchestration for AI/automation-driven products
• Work comfortably in a very small, fast-moving startup team with little structure
• Balance full-stack work when required, with a clear emphasis on backend ownership
• Debug production issues and exercise strong engineering judgment
• Collaborate closely with founders, customers, and cross-functional stakeholders

Requirements

• Early engineer, founding engineer, startup generalist, or strong product/backend engineer from a scaling startup
• Track record of shipping real products, ideally 0-to-1 or in ambiguous/messy environments
• Experience with backend systems, APIs, data modeling, automation, and integrations
• Applied AI or workflow/orchestration experience (agentic workflows, RAG, LLM-enabled features) is a plus
• Python experience is a plus; modern web/backend stacks are acceptable-stack fit matters less than raw engineering quality
• Demonstrated ownership of customer-facing features and close work with founders or customers
• Clear motivation for early-stage startup work and comfort with ambiguity and speed
• Not a fit: frontend-only, data-only/internal-tools-only, pure DevOps/SRE without product ownership, pure research/ML without shipping experience, or candidates motivated primarily by corporate titles
• Compensation & Details
• Base compensation up to $275k plus meaningful equity.
• Location
• San Francisco, CA, USA. Hybrid/in-office required. Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to the area.

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Company Intel

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