Software Engineer, Backend

At Epiq, your work contributes to complex, global legal outcomes. You’ll join a values‑driven community where integrity guides decisions, relentless service sets the bar, and we thrive on big challenges together. We invest in your growth with enterprise‑wide learning and mobility. We celebrate who you are, and we respect life beyond work with flexibility that’s recognized externally. Enabled by modern platforms and AI, you’ll do the most meaningful work of your career and see your impact at scale.

Job Description:

About Epiq AI Labs

Epiq AI Labs is the innovation and engineering hub behind Epiq’s next-generation AI platform for corporate legal departments and global law firms. Operating with the speed and autonomy of a startup and the resources of a global alternative legal services provider, the team builds intelligent agents, reasoning engines, knowledge systems, and structured workflows for litigation, investigations, compliance, and corporate knowledge work.

We are fast, experimental, and product-obsessed, with high autonomy, high trust, and low bureaucracy. We ship to real legal clients and hold a high bar for correctness, and we use AI tools throughout our own development workflow. The team is deeply technical, highly collaborative, and owns its systems end to end — you design it, you build it, you ship it.

The Opportunity

You will design, build, and operate the core services and platform capabilities behind Epiq AI Labs’ AI-driven legal platform — from backend services, APIs, and distributed systems to asynchronous workflows, data pipelines, secure multi-tenant capabilities, and the foundations for running LLM-powered applications and agents in production. You will own systems end to end, from technical design and implementation through deployment, observability, and production operations, and expand that ownership as the platform grows.

Essential Job Responsibilities

• Design, implement, test, debug, and operate backend services, REST APIs, and platform components that power Epiq AI Labs’ products.
• Build distributed systems, data pipelines, and asynchronous workflows using queues, messaging, and event-driven patterns, with careful attention to concurrency, idempotency, retries, and failure recovery.
• Design data models and storage across relational databases, object storage, search, and vector stores, making pragmatic decisions around schemas, indexing, consistency, and performance.
• Implement secure, multi-tenant capabilities, including authentication, authorization, role-based access controls, tenant isolation, and data access controls.
• Partner with AI engineers to build the backend services, data pipelines, and access controls that agent execution, retrieval, and evaluation depend on.
• Instrument services with metrics, logs, and traces; investigate production issues, identify root causes, and implement lasting fixes; and participate in the on-call rotation.
• Use AI coding agents throughout development while owning the outcome — the design, specifications and test plans, code review, and verification of correctness, security, and maintainability — and ship major changes behind automated tests and controlled rollouts, with product and legal-domain validation where appropriate.
• Senior+ level: Define the foundational architecture and engineering patterns used across teams, lead the most complex cross-cutting initiatives (including major migrations and modernization), and identify architectural debt and systemic risks before they limit the platform.
• Senior+ level: Raise the engineering bar by promoting best engineering practice, building reusable platform primitives, mentoring engineers, and partnering with product and engineering leaders on technical direction while staying hands-on and accountable for delivering working software.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience designing, building, and operating backend systems in production, including responding to production issues. Hiring level will reflect demonstrated technical depth, scope of ownership, and impact.
• Proficiency in Python, or strong proficiency in a comparable language with the ability to work primarily in Python.
• Solid grounding in distributed-systems fundamentals, including concurrency, consistency, asynchronous processing, failure modes, and idempotency.
• Experience with a major cloud platform such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Working experience with relational databases, including schema design, query optimization, and migrations; PostgreSQL preferred.
• Experience with asynchronous or event-driven processing using message queues, task workers, or comparable technologies.
• Experience designing and implementing REST APIs consumed by other services or teams.
• Experience with automated testing, continuous integration, and containerized deployment; exposure to Kubernetes preferred.
• Experience with observability practices, including metrics, logging, and tracing.
• Experience writing technical design documents and participating in design and code reviews.
• Demonstrated proficiency using AI coding agents in day-to-day development, with sound judgment about where they accelerate work and where they fail.
• Self-motivated, with high ownership: you solve problems end to end, actively keep up with new developments in AI, and quickly learn and apply new technologies and approaches to your work, including areas you haven't worked in before.
• Senior+ level: Demonstrated technical leadership at the corresponding level, with a track record of defining architecture and delivering complex distributed systems across multiple teams or products, and deep expertise in Python, distributed-systems fundamentals, relational databases such as PostgreSQL, and production reliability.
• Senior+ level: Proven ability to lead technical direction across organizational boundaries without direct authority, and to author technical designs that clearly communicate architectural trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building LLM-based applications, agentic systems, or other AI/ML or data-intensive applications in production.
• Experience with search or vector technologies such as Solr or Qdrant.
• Experience with durable application workflows or data-pipeline orchestration, using tools such as Temporal, Airflow, or Dagster.
• Experience with Terraform or another infrastructure-as-code tool.
• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architectures.
• Experience with authentication and authorization standards, including OAuth2, OIDC, or SAML.

#LI-KS1

Candidates who meet most, but not all, of the qualifications above are encouraged to apply.

#1100 Epiq eDiscovery Solutions, Inc.

Technology Stack

Python · LLM APIs and agent frameworks · PostgreSQL · RabbitMQ · Temporal · Solr · Qdrant · OAuth2 / OIDC / SAML · Azure · Kubernetes · Docker · Terraform · Prometheus · Grafana · OpenTelemetry

The Compensation range for this role is $180,000 -$260,000 USD annually and may be eligible for an annual bonus.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

Must be authorized to work in the United States for any employer. 

Your specific salary will be determined based on several factors:

• Location-based market rate for the role

• Your abilities in relation to the job specification

• Performance during screening and interview

• Pay parity with the wider team in the considered location

Further details about the package will be provided during the initial screening call with the Talent Acquisition Team.

Click here to learn about Epiq's Benefits.

Epiq Leadership Compass

Fosters Relationships & Collaboration

Builds trust and alignment through open communication, shared goals, and strong partnerships to drive collective success.

• Build trust-based partnerships

• Nurture long-term relationships

• Remove collaboration barriers

• Celebrate cross-team success

Engages & Influences

Inspires action and alignment through clear communication, purposeful influence, and a compelling vision.

• Use storytelling to build buy-in

• Align communication with organizational goals

• Guild alignment through strong engagement

Maximizes Performance

Sets and reinforces performance standards that drive results, ensure accountability, and align with Epiq’s goals.

• Use data to identify improvement opportunities

• Make informed decisions

• Align team goals with boarder strategy

• Empower teams to manage their own goals

• Translate vision into clear priorities

• Prepare for disruptions with strong change management

Achieves Operational Success

Drives continuous improvement and operational excellence through smart processes, data insights, and quality execution.

• Improve workflows for team efficiency

• Use clear documentation and expectations

• Resolve issues quickly using data and feedback

It is Epiq’s policy to comply with all applicable equal employment opportunity laws by making all employment decisions without unlawful regard or consideration of any individual’s race, religion, ethnicity, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expressions, transgender status, sexual and other reproductive health decisions, marital status, age, national origin, genetic information, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, veteran or family status or any other basis protected by applicable national, federal, state, provincial or local law. Epiq’s policy prohibits unlawful discrimination based on any of these impermissible bases, as well as any bases or grounds protected by applicable law in each jurisdiction. In addition Epiq will take affirmative action for minorities, women, covered veterans and individuals with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process because of a disability, it is available upon request. Epiq is pleased to provide such assistance and no applicant will be penalized as a result of such a request.  Pursuant to relevant law, where applicable, Epiq will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.