Staff Backend Engineer

At Artisan, we’re building real AI employees - not copilots, not assistants, but autonomous teammates.

Our first, Ava, is an AI BDR. She finds and researches leads, writes emails in customers’ tone of voice, runs outbound sequences, self-optimizes, and manages email deliverability infrastructure. She learns, adapts, and improves over time - just like a human would.

Human team members use Artisan as their primary working platform, replacing a sprawling stack of sales tools, and have Artisans working alongside them.

We went through Y Combinator (W24) and have raised $35M+ from top investors. We’re at $7M+ ARR, with hundreds of customers including Remote, Quora, and SumUp. We’re currently working on Ava 2.0, pushing the boundaries of what an AI employee can do. And we're hiring.

This isn’t a maintenance gig. You’ll design, build, and scale the backend that powers AI employees. Expect to:

• Build resilient, scalable services: Architect and implement backend systems and APIs that handle high-throughput AI requests with precision.

• Own end-to-end delivery: From design to deployment, you’ll shepherd features into production rapidly, with quality and ownership.

• Work cross-functionally: Partner with product, design, and AI teams to ensure backend decisions serve real user workflows.

• Use AI as a coworker: Directly collaborate with AI coding agents like Claude Code, leveraging them to boost your productivity and quality.

• Maintain engineering rigor: Champion testing, observability, deployment pipelines, and reliability best practices from day one.

• Drive long-term scalability: Iteratively improve architecture, manage technical debt, and optimize for scale as we grow.

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience in high-growth environments, preferably early-stage or Series B.

• Strong experience building scalable, data-intensive services with modern APIs and robust infrastructure.

• Proficiency with cloud-native tools - containers, orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), monitoring, CI/CD.

• Deep understanding of distributed systems, APIs, reliability, performance, and database systems (SQL + NoSQL).

• Experience with modern stacks - TypeScript/Node preferred, but equivalent backend stacks are welcome.

• Demonstrated track record of ownership - leading parts of systems independently and shipping with impact.

• Excellent communication, clarity in articulating architecture to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• End-to-end ownership: You’re not just doing the “ticket”; you own feature delivery. Build systems that support intelligent, autonomous AI teammates.

• Scalable, reliable systems: Backend must handle growth and complexity. High-throughput pipelines serving AI agents across many customers.

• Hands-on infrastructure work: Jump in on deployment, monitoring, tuning. You're shaping the platform that automates itself (AI agents included).

• Collaborative, multidisciplinary environment: Work closely with product, design, ops. Work alongside AI engineers and product partners to define what AI employees can do.

• Balance innovation and technical debt: Iterate quickly while maintaining system health. Ship fast but sustainably - your engine powers AI teammates in production.

• You’ll be building the infrastructure that powers AI employees - an entirely new product category.

• Real equity upside and compensation aligned with high expectations and high impact.

• High-velocity environment: release often, learn fast, iterate week over week.

• Mission-driven: reshape how businesses scale by putting AI on the front lines.

• Role: Engineering

• Eng type: Backend

• Job type: Full-time

• Experience: 6+ years

• Location: San Francisco or NYC (in-person)

• Remote: No

• US visas: Will sponsor