Staff Backend Engineer

Air is a Creative Ops System for creative teams. Our product automates the mindless tasks that creatives and marketers do every day to manage content and unlocks creativity through image recognition, automated versioning, and approval workflows. We launched in March 2021 and have raised +$70m from world-class venture capital groups including Avenir, Tiger Global, Headline Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, WndrCo, and Slack Ventures.

The Role

Help shape the future of creative work as our Staff Backend Engineer.

At Air, we’re redefining how creative teams organize and access their work. As a Staff Engineer, you’ll play a pivotal role in building intelligent systems that power our platform, delivering cutting-edge search and discovery capabilities to teams worldwide. You’ll join a talented team of engineers and work closely with our cofounders, product, and other cross-functional teams. You’ll have the opportunity to lead the design of robust, scalable systems that integrate AI capabilities into our core platform, balancing strong engineering fundamentals with a practical understanding of product goals and constraints.

This role is for you if you have extensive experience in backend engineering and Node.js/Typescript. You're passionate about designing robust data models, implementing event-driven architectures, and scaling backend infrastructure to support sophisticated AI enrichment pipelines. You're used to collaborating with product managers and engineers to prioritize and navigate ambiguities. You excel at moving fast and pivoting based on quick learnings, adapting to changing requirements with agility. You're obsessed with building resilient, scalable systems.

To help us filter genuine candidates, include the code AIR-ENG-2025 in the designated field of the application form.

Requirements

• 8+ years experience working with Node.js and TypeScript in a professional capacity.
• Extensive experience designing and implementing distributed backend services and APIs.
• Strong understanding of data modeling concepts and experience with AWS Aurora, Postgres, and Elasticsearch.
• Proven experience with event-driven architectures, message queues, and distributed systems.
• Deep knowledge of AWS services (Lambda, S3, EC2, RDS, SQS, SNS, etc.) and cloud infrastructure.
• Experience designing and maintaining systems that support ML pipelines and large-scale data processing.
• Track record of scaling backend infrastructure to handle increasing load and complexity.
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly communicate complex technical challenges and propose effective solutions.

Benefits

Our company culture was built around a tireless pursuit to be the best at what we do. We're entrepreneurial and focused: tackling problems head-on without ego. We communicate with empathy. We speak directly, listen thoughtfully, and ask questions. We previously worked out of a cozy warehouse in Brooklyn, but are currently distributed around the globe. This is a remote role.

Air contributes 90% to medical, dental, and vision insurance and 75% to dependent coverage. Employees also have life insurance, disability insurance, and membership to One Medical. We offer a generous work from home stipend, professional development reimbursement, and unlimited vacation days. Although we are still early stage, we are always seeking ways to invest in the wellness and continued education of our employees.

At Air, we believe that it takes a diversity of thought, culture, race, sexual orientation, and outlook to build a world-class business. We value unique contributions and welcome people of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to join us at Air.

If based in the US, the compensation range for this role is USD $160,000 to $240,000.

If based in Canada, the compensation range for this role is CAD $165,000 to $248,000.