Backend Engineer

About the role

• Role: Backend Engineer
• Location: Fully Remote (Headquarters in Boston, MA)
• Working Hours: 9-5 EST
• Onsite: Travel every 8-10 weeks for a multi-day onsite
• JOIN US

At Product Genius, we don't tell people what to do-we give them the strategic information to make great decisions on their own. We are generous with one another and committed to creating a collaborative, autonomous environment.

We are a seed-stage startup with a proven product, customers, and leap-frog real-time learning AI technology ($35M DARPA R&D, patented). We tackle challenging problems, building new systems from scratch and scaling our architecture. Join us and grow with our company.

The Role

You'll build and maintain the backend systems at the core of a real-time learning AI: the APIs and data pipelines that connect live user and merchant behavior to systems that learn from it. You'll work alongside exceptional AI researchers and engineers, with real autonomy to shape how that architecture evolves.

This is a hands-on, AI-native engineering role. You'll need to subscribe to agentic-led development. You'll use agentic coding tools daily, including managing multiple parallel coding sessions, to move quickly through a complex and fast-changing codebase. You'll be trusted with context and the freedom to decide how to use it, not handed a task list.

What You'll Own

• Real-time learning engine. Contribute directly to the systems at the core of the business.
• APIs and data pipelines. Build and maintain the connections between live user behavior and our self-learning systems.
• Engineering practices. Champion practices that safely accelerate the team: AI-assisted coding, streamlined CI/CD, and stronger QA.
• Production ownership. Own what you ship. Dig into logs and traces, find root causes, and improve testing to prevent issues before they recur.

What We're Looking for

• 5+ years of experience building and maintaining production backend systems.
• Hands-on daily experience with agentic AI coding tools, comfortable managing multiple parallel sessions.
• Experience building APIs and data pipelines connecting live systems to downstream analytics or ML systems.
• Comfortable picking up any language; we typically use Python, SQL, TypeScript, and React.
• Able to jump into a complex, unfamiliar codebase and rapidly get productive in it.
• Collaborative at the level of shared context and problem framing; self-sufficient at the level of code.
• Strong math or analytical background. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Strong Plus

• You're the person who spins up a newly released tool or framework just to see what's possible.
• You've run an LLM on your local machine for fun.
• Exposure to containerization and orchestration tooling (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP).
• Experience with ClickHouse queries and optimization.
• Comfortable in a fast-moving startup environment where priorities and scope can shift quickly.
• E-commerce industry knowledge or empathy-you understand merchant and customer workflows.
• Experience collaborating cross-functionally with teams like sales and marketing, including hands-on customer integrations.

What This Is Not

This isn't a role where tasks arrive fully specified and you execute against a spec. If you want detailed direction before you start, or you'd rather use one AI coding session at a time and review its output line by line forever, this probably isn't the right fit. If you want real ownership over pieces of core infrastructure, the opportunity to contribute to big-picture implementation decisions, and a team that shares context instead of tickets, we'd love to talk.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary plus stock options.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401k with matching contributions.
• Work-at-home office reimbursement benefit.
• Generous paid time off.