Backend Engineer, AI Integrations
🏔️ About Sierra Studio
Sierra Studio is a product development company with a focus on AI – we turn our customers’ ideas into reality! We’re based in Los Angeles, but our teammates live all around the world. We create a wide variety of products for our customers: from LLM-powered web/mobile apps to cutting-edge work at the frontier of AI.
💼 About The Role
As a Backend Engineer focused on AI Integrations, you'll lead engineering on AI products that ship production ready generative AI features. You'll architect the stack, write clean code, integrate LLM APIs, own features end-to-end, and work with your teammates to take ideas from prototype to something clients can rely on.
This role sits between our Fullstack and AI tracks: strong fullstack engineering skills, plus hands-on experience at the application layer of AI: model APIs, retrieval, agentic engineering.
Here's a taste of what you could do at Sierra!
Client projects: Lead AI-powered product work for a startup: designing and shipping customer-facing AI experiences, from agent orchestration and tool use to the interfaces and backend systems that support them
Internal projects: Improve our own AI tooling and delivery practices
Hiring: Help us grow the team and interview future candidates
Leadership: Mentor other engineers to level up our team
🔎 Who We’re Looking For
We’re looking for a backend engineer with experience building LLM-powered products.
If you're excited about this role but don't check every box, we'd love to see your application anyway.
Requirements:
5+ years of experience in software engineering, including leading projects or people
Backend experience: TypeScript or Python
Experience with cloud infrastructure (e.g. Azure, GCP, AWS)
Experience with databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc)
Hands-on experience building with modern LLM APIs (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic)
Experience with agentic products and prompt engineering
Experience with the retrieval layer (e.g. RAG, embeddings, vector search)
Experience writing and evaluating Claude Skills
Know how to choose the right LLM for the right task, balancing quality, cost, and other factors
Experience creating and integrating with MCP servers and converting API endpoints into tools
Growth mindset: able to quickly learn new languages, frameworks, and more
Strong written + verbal communication skills in English
Ability to accurately estimate timelines and scope
Experience using AI for coding (e.g. Claude Code, Codex)
Great to have:
Experience with system administration, internal workspaces, and IT infra (e.g. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Sharepoint)
Experience connecting Cowork / ChatGPT Work to internal data sources
Experience with integrating Microsoft 365 with AI systems
Experience building data ingestion pipelines
Experience in the financial sector
Bonus – nice to have:
Consulting, product studio, or multi-client delivery experience
Things you've built that you'd like to show us — work projects, open source, or side projects all count!
🌎 How We Work
Fully remote, with flexible hours. We care about output, not hours online. We support work-life balance for teammates at every life stage.
💖 Our culture
Growth mindset: We look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes.
Supportive: We keep our egos out of the workplace and support each other when trying new things.
Product & customer centric: We care deeply about our customers and clients and always keep their needs top of mind. We build tech to solve real problems.
Ownership: We take initiative, even when it is “not our job.” As a startup, we all wear lots of hats.
💡 Why join us?
At Sierra Studio, we believe in nurturing talent and creating good vibes at work. We seek inclusion and embrace our differences. We’re all about “growth mindset”, and we look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes. We don’t fit our teammates into boxes, and instead we understand that each person has their own unique set of skills that they bring to the table. If you join us, we’ll embrace who you are today, and give you the space and tools to keep growing.
Salary Range: $60k - $100k annually.
Your exact compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors that reflect your individual qualifications and how they align with the needs of the role.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, including leading projects or people
- Backend development experience with TypeScript or Python
- Experience with cloud infrastructure such as Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or AWS
- Experience with databases such as PostgreSQL or MongoDB
- Hands-on experience building with modern LLM APIs such as OpenAI or Anthropic
- Experience building agentic products and using prompt engineering
- Experience with retrieval technologies, including RAG, embeddings, or vector search
- Experience writing and evaluating Claude Skills
- Ability to select appropriate LLMs while balancing quality, cost, and other factors
- Experience creating and integrating with MCP servers and converting API endpoints into tools
- Ability to quickly learn new languages and frameworks
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English
- Ability to accurately estimate timelines and scope
- Experience using AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Codex
- Experience with system administration, internal workspaces, or IT infrastructure such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or SharePoint
- Experience connecting Cowork or ChatGPT Work to internal data sources
- Experience integrating Microsoft 365 with AI systems
- Experience building data ingestion pipelines
- Experience in the financial sector
- Consulting, product studio, or multi-client delivery experience
- Examples of work, open-source projects, or side projects to show
What We Do
Make your company AI First The pace of change is accelerating. We help business leaders and founders embed AI-first systems, tools, and talent turning disruption into a competitive advantage.
