Software Engineer - Backend

About us

We’re on a mission to make conversational AI agents think and respond at the speed of human conversation, everywhere they run. Today’s retrieval stack wasn’t built for real-time reasoning, so we’re building Moss: the real-time semantic search layer for the conversational AI. Backed by YC, we’re making every AI product feel instantaneous, deeply personalized, and actually useful in the real world.

We're looking for a senior Backend Engineer (6+ years experience) who thrives on solving complex problems and will not wait for someone else to tell what to do. You'll work directly with the founding team to architect core systems, build complex infrastructure, and shape the future of agentic experiences.

Must-Have Requirements

• 6+ years building and shipping production software in a product-focused environment.
• Strong expertise in Rust, Go or Node.js.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, async I/O, and data consistency.
• Proven ability to design low-latency APIs and performance-critical services.
• Experience with datastores and indexing systems & familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare).
• Strong bias for action, comfort with ambiguity, and ownership mindset.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience building or optimizing search, vector databases, or retrieval systems.
• Hands-on work with SIMD, memory optimization, or performance profiling.
• Familiarity with WASM, edge runtimes, or browser/server hybrid architectures.
• Experience with multi-tenant systems, API auth, rate-limiting, and usage metering.
• Contributions to open-source infra / performance-critical libraries.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and build core backend services that power Moss's real-time retrieval layer.
• Design and operate low-latency, high-throughput APIs used by developers and agents.
• Build scalable systems for indexing, querying, syncing, and metadata management.
• Optimize for p99 latency, throughput, and resource efficiency across cloud and edge environments.
• Work closely with customers and design partners to translate real-world constraints into robust systems.
• Contribute to the Moss engineering culture with strong code quality, fast iteration, rapid learning.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: Above market compensation ($50K - $80K USD)
• Equity: Meaningful stock options
• Location: India (Remote).
• Work: Remote collaboration as a small, high-trust, founder-led team.