Scale Engineer

Member of Technical Staff - Product (Backend)

Backend Engineer · Senior · Full Time

New YorkUSD 150k – 300k7mo ago
Apply for this role

Opens Modal's application page

Role

What you'll do.

Modal is seeking a talented Backend Engineer to join their rapidly growing AI infrastructure platform. The ideal candidate will develop scalable developer tools for cutting-edge AI workloads, working across the full technology stack to build robust, high-performance systems that support the world's leading AI companies.

Responsibilities

  • Developer Tools Development: Build scalable infrastructure for AI companies' development workflows
  • System Architecture: Design and implement robust backend services supporting complex AI workloads
  • Performance Optimization: Create high-performance systems with efficient resource utilization
  • Customer-Centric Solution Design: Develop solutions that directly address customer technological challenges

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Full Stack Proficiency

    Comprehensive understanding of web application development across TypeScript, Python, and data platforms

  • Infrastructure Scalability

    Experience designing systems for large-scale computational workloads

Education

  • Computer Science

    Bachelor's or equivalent practical experience in software engineering or related field

Experience

  • Production Systems

    Demonstrated history of building and shipping end-to-end web applications

  • AI/ML Infrastructure

    Hands-on experience with AI model training, inference, or related infrastructure

Skills

Required

  • Web Application Development

    End-to-end modern web application development experience

  • Full Stack Development

    Ability to work across frontend and backend technologies

  • Python

    Backend service development using Python

  • Observability

    Deep understanding of large-scale workload monitoring and tooling

Preferred

  • B2B SaaS

    Nice to have

    Experience with enterprise software and B2B tooling

  • Machine Learning Infrastructure

    Nice to have

    Knowledge of LLM and diffusion model infrastructure

  • Payment Systems

    Nice to have

    Experience with billing and payment system design

Tech stack

Languages

TypeScriptPython

Databases

ClickHouse

Tools

Observability Tools

Other

AI Infrastructure

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 150,000 – 300,000

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Equity

    Stock options in a high-growth AI infrastructure startup

  • Remote Flexibility

    Hybrid work model with NYC office presence

  • Cutting-Edge Technology

    Work with advanced AI and cloud infrastructure technologies

  • Professional Growth

    Opportunities to work with creators of popular open-source projects

Process

Interview steps.

  1. 01

    Initial Screening

    Resume and background review

  2. 02

    Technical Phone Screen

    Discussion of technical experience and problem-solving approach

  3. 03

    Technical Interview

    In-depth coding and system design assessment

  4. 04

    Team Fit Interview

    Evaluation of collaboration and product thinking skills

  5. 05

    Final Interview

    Meeting with engineering leadership

Full posting

Original listing.

About Us:

Modal provides the infrastructure foundation for AI teams. With instant GPU access, sub-second container startups, and native storage, Modal makes it simple to train models, run batch jobs, and serve low-latency inference. We have thousands of customers who rely on us for production AI workloads, including Lovable, Scale AI, Substack, and Suno.

We're a fast-growing team based out of NYC, SF, and Stockholm. We've hit 9-figure ARR and recently raised a Series B at a $1.1B valuation. Our investors include Lux Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Amplify Partners, and Elad Gil.

Working at Modal means joining one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure organizations at an early stage, with many opportunities to grow within the company. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g. Seaborn, Luigi), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience.

The Role:

We're looking for strong backend engineers who love building a developer tools used by the largest AI companies in the world. You’ll be building for things at scale, but also for new AI workflows that change every day.

Requirements:

  • Experience building and shipping modern web applications end-to-end. We care more about what you’ve built than how many years you’ve been building.

  • Comfort working across the stack: TypeScript on the frontend, Python services on the backend, and ClickHouse for data and analytics.

  • Deep knowledge of observability tools and patterns used for large-scale workloads such as custom sandboxes, training and inference for large language (LLM) and diffusion models.

  • Experience with at least one of: billing/payments systems, B2B SaaS tooling, or enterprise software, or LLM / diffusion models inference and training loads.

  • Strong product instincts; you think about customer problems, not just tickets.

  • Ability to make good tradeoffs between shipping fast and building for scale.

  • Ability to work in-person in our NYC office.

Apply for this position

Redirects to Modal's application page.

Other roles

More at Modal.

View all 10 roles