Senior Backend Software Engineer - GenAI

Who is Recruiting from Scratch: 

Recruiting from Scratch is a specialized talent firm dedicated to helping companies build exceptional teams. We partner closely with our clients to deeply understand their needs, then connect them with top-tier candidates who are not only highly skilled but also the right fit for the company’s culture and vision. Our mission is simple: place the best people in the right roles to drive long-term success for both clients and candidates. 

 

Title of Role: Senior Backend Software Engineer – GenAI
Location: Rosslyn, VA (Washington, DC Area) or Seattle, WA
Company Stage of Funding: Series A
Office Type: Onsite
Salary: $200,000 – $230,000 Base + Competitive Equity

Company Description

Our client is a fast-growing, venture-backed technology company building mission-critical software for complex logistics and operational environments.

The company develops modern command-and-control and AI-enabled software that helps large organizations replace fragmented, legacy operational processes with real-time, intelligent systems. Following rapid customer adoption and a recent major Series A financing, the team is expanding its Generative AI platform to meet significant demand.

This is a high-ownership opportunity to lead the technical development of production GenAI capabilities from the ground up while working alongside a small, highly collaborative engineering organization.

What You Will Do

• Lead the architecture and development of production GenAI systems from the ground up
• Design and ship RAG architectures, LLM integrations, retrieval pipelines, and agentic workflows
• Own backend architecture across services, APIs, asynchronous workflows, queues, storage, data pipelines, observability, and reliability
• Build scalable infrastructure that integrates GenAI capabilities into mission-critical software products
• Design systems that support tool use, retrieval, orchestration, and complex AI workflows
• Make architectural decisions in ambiguous environments with minimal direction
• Evaluate technical tradeoffs across performance, reliability, scalability, and product requirements
• Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and deployed teams to rapidly iterate based on real-world user needs
• Help establish engineering standards and architecture for a growing GenAI platform

Ideal Candidate Background

• 6–8 years of professional software engineering experience with deep backend engineering expertise
• Significant hands-on experience building and shipping production GenAI/LLM systems
• Proven experience taking GenAI products from 0→1, including RAG, agents, retrieval pipelines, tool use, or similar systems
• Strong backend and distributed systems fundamentals
• Experience designing production services, APIs, asynchronous workflows, queues, storage systems, and data pipelines
• Strong programming skills in Python, Go, Java, TypeScript, or similar backend languages
• Demonstrated end-to-end architecture ownership in ambiguous product environments
• Strong coding fundamentals and technical problem-solving ability
• Ability to independently translate loosely defined problems into production systems

Preferred

• Experience with agentic workflows, tool orchestration, search, or retrieval systems
• Experience with Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or vector databases
• Background in defense technology, logistics software, applied AI, or other mission-critical systems
• Experience working at an early-stage or high-growth technology company
• Familiarity with cloud services, CI/CD, observability, and modern distributed infrastructure
• Ability to meet applicable requirements for work on sensitive government programs

Compensation & Benefits

• $200,000 – $230,000 base salary
• Competitive equity package
• High ownership over a greenfield GenAI platform
• Opportunity to build production AI systems from scratch
• Direct exposure to real-world users and mission-critical use cases
• Highly collaborative engineering culture with significant autonomy
• Onsite opportunities in the Washington, DC area or Seattle

This role is ideal for a senior backend engineer who has moved beyond experimenting with LLMs and has already built reliable, production-grade GenAI systems—and now wants ownership over an entire AI platform.