**Backend Engineer**
**About CHAI AI**
CHAI is a social AI platform where millions of people create, share, and talk to AI characters. As of Sep 2026, it has 10 million active users and $100 million ARR. After receiving over $55M in funding from investors such as AMD and CoreWeave, CHAI AI is actively hiring engineers to expand its team.
**About the team**
Engineering is 15–20 people with a flat structure. High impact on the product, fast iteration, and clear metrics to measure against.
**What you will work on**
Build and scale the services between 10M users and our model fleet — routing, conversation state, queuing. High volume, low latency, low error rate. You own it end to end.
**You might thrive in this role if you…**
(minimum/Preferred requirements)
- 2+ years of software engineering experience
- High motivation and talented.
- High ownership: comfortable with ambiguity, able to define the problem and the plan rather than execute a predefined spec.
- Able to work in person at our Palo Alto Office.
**Compensation and benefits**
Top pay AI startup in Bay Area. $477,000 – $652,000, paid 100% in cash.
We benchmark against total comp at Meta, Google, and OpenAI — and pay that number in cash, not equity, with the option to trade a portion of cash for stock options.
Health, 401k, unlimited PTO.
**Our interview process**
We run a fast process - an offer can be given within 7 days of first contact.
1. 20 minute phone screen with our founder or engineer
2. 20 minute personality assessment
3. Take home assessment. 60-90 minutes to complete.
4. One day onsite interview.
Skills Required
- 2+ years of software engineering experience
- High motivation and talent
- Ability to take high ownership and define problems and plans independently
- Ability to work in person at the Palo Alto office
What We Do
CHAI AI is a startup based in Palo Alto, California. Our platform for social AI is used by millions. Our growth is driven by fast iteration cycles and the hard work of talented engineers. Mission: People want to create their own AI that they can share. People want to search and interact with AI created by others. Just as Social Media Platforms arose to meet the demand of consumers when video creation and consumption became ubiquitous. Now there is a need for Social AI Platforms to create tools and recommendation algorithms so consumers can create generative AI, share, and interact.
Why Work With Us
Our fast-growing company is supported by a talented engineering team that thrives on fast iteration cycles and takes on the most challenging problems in the field. CHAI AI operates with a high-bar, high-reward culture where engineers own entire product segments end-to-end, from prototyping to production.
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