Senior A.I. Backend Engineer

This role is with BeHeard, a portfolio company of Menlo Ventures.

About BeHeard

BeHeard is a seed-stage startup backed by True Ventures, Menlo VC, Anthropic, and a few brilliant Angels. BeHeard replaces boring surveys with heart-to-heart conversations with brands, so that businesses can truly understand the voice of the customer, improve their products and services, and boost revenues. BeHeard's first market is the multi-billion dollar customer feedback segment—where incumbents offer surveys that are formulaic, ill-timed, and miss the essence of what customers wish to say to brands. Are you interested in joining us to build a feedback experience that’s more human, more considerate, and more connected?

BeHeard is an AI-first company that looks for every opportunity to put agents in charge of tasks that once demanded human brains. We build considerate AI agents that listen deeply, think deeply, and produce results for customers and businesses.

About You

You are a senior engineer who can single-handedly stand up reliable service infrastructure and endpoints with ease. You care deeply about craftsmanship in the form of code quality and user experience. You are comfortable being one of the first few engineers at a fast-paced startup with a very early product. You are self-sufficient and can get things done without relying on other engineers.

You respond quickly and efficiently when business needs arise. You can balance technical debt and code quality. You understand the iron triangle of time, features, and quality. BeHeard is a time and quality focused company. That means that we, more often than not, cut features to maintain product quality and schedule.

Culture of craftsmanship

We care deeply about the people that we hire and the products that we build. We support balanced quality of life, mental and physical health, and continuing education. We want you to feel happy, connected, and autonomous at BeHeard—so that you can do the best work of your career.

*We care to build beautiful, thoughtful, and delightful products.

*We reduce features so that we can ship high-quality features on time.

*We are craftspeople who take pride in every experience that we ship.

*We prioritize security, code reviews, and automated tests.

Our current backend stack includes Python microservices deployed to AWS via Terraform. Our current frontend stack includes JavaScript and React, also deployed to AWS via Terraform.

This role is remote-friendly, however we have offices in San Francisco and Phoenix, and we welcome anyone to work in a hybrid capacity with us in those areas.

Core Responsibilities

• Implement courteous AI agents with long-term memories
• Design and build multi-agent orchestration layers
• Design and build new APIs for use by our frontend products
• Support customer pilots and engagements
• Partner with the CTO to balance craftsmanship with schedule

Qualifications

• 3+ years of senior-level experience designing, maintaining, and scaling high-availability backend APIs and services
• Demonstrable commitment to code quality, code review, and unit tests
• Expert knowledge of AWS services like API Gateway, Lambda
• Expert knowledge of architectural patterns including MVC, Rest, GraphQL
• Expert knowledge of authentication and authorization
• Expert knowledge of databases ranging from Postgres to DynamoDB
• Expert knowledge of at least one of: Python, Go, Rust
• Working knowledge of Terraform and other infrastructure as code (IaC)
• Working knowledge of network security and encryption
• Working knowledge of LLMs
• Very nice to have: experience with chat and SMS

Compensation and Benefits

• Salary of $150,000 - $250,000
• Equity of .5% - 1%, based on experience and salary expectations
• Medical, Dental, Vision benefits
• In-person office with your own desk for those in San Francisco or Phoenix