Member of Technical Staff - Backend/Distributed Systems

About the Role

We’re hiring a Distributed Systems / Backend Engineer to serve as a key contributor on the core backend platform powering Emerald AI. This is a high-impact role: you will drive architectural decisions, introduce best practices, build foundational infrastructure, and help guide the evolution of our real-time energy intelligence engine.

You’ll work across ingestion, compute, storage, and system orchestration-designing components that must be highly reliable, resilient, and capable of operating at scale. As one of the early engineering hires, you’ll have a major influence on our stack, roadmap, and long-term technical direction.

We hire across levels, from early-career to staff+, with expectations and scope aligned to your ability to drive outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Designing and scaling systems that interact with real-world energy infrastructure
• Building high-performance services and APIs that power core product workflows
• Tackling hard problems in reliability, data modeling, and system design
• Shipping end-to-end features-from idea to production
• Improving system observability, performance, and fault tolerance
• Partnering closely with product to turn ambiguous problems into shipped solutions

For senior candidates, you’ll have immediate opportunities to

• Drive architecture and technical direction
• Lead ambiguous, high-impact initiatives
• Mentor and elevate other engineers

Who Thrives Here

• Engineers who want to build, not just maintain
• People who take ownership without waiting for permission
• Those who enjoy figuring things out when the path isn’t obvious
• Engineers who care about both technical excellence and real-world impact
• People who prefer high trust, high accountability environments

Preferred Requirements

• Experience with distributed systems or data-intensive applications
• Experience building and operating backend or infrastructure systems with a focus on reliability, performance, and scalability
• Interest in grid systems, energy orchestration, and applying AI to real-world infrastructure
• Experience working on real-time or near real-time systems
• Comfort operating in ambiguous environments and turning open-ended problems into production systems
• Strong system design skills, including tradeoffs across latency, consistency, and scalability
• Ability to work across the stack when needed to unblock progress

What We Offer

• Make an impact. Solve the AI power bottleneck and shape how data centers scale sustainably.
• Join a world-class team of AI, cloud, software, and energy experts in a collaborative, low-ego environment.
• Build from 0>1. Influence strategy, GTM, org design, and customer/investor engagement from day one.
• Competitive pay + equity. Stock options let you share in the value you help create.
• Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) matching.
• Flexible location. Work from D.C., Boston, or the Bay Area, with 1 WFH day/week.
• Backed by top investors, including Radical Ventures and NVIDIA.

Emerald AI strives to respect the dignity and independence of people with disabilities and is committed to giving them the same opportunity to succeed as all other employees.