Software Engineer, Backend (Product)

About the role

ClayAI is looking for a backend product engineer to own the systems behind the features customers use daily. The role blends product management and engineering, letting you define, ship, and iterate on backend surfaces that directly impact user experience.

Key responsibilities

• Own a product surface end‑to‑end, from problem definition through shipped, measured outcome.
• Scope work with design, data‑science and GTM partners, write specs, cut unnecessary work, and make decisive calls.
• Interact directly with customers—attend calls, read tickets, and observe usage—to inform backend decisions.
• Ship fast, iterate quickly, and address scaling challenges as usage grows.
• Improve codebase performance, reliability, and development velocity (negative maintenance).
• Mentor other engineers and share knowledge across the team.

Required profile

• 4+ years of hands‑on engineering experience building customer‑facing products.
• Strong backend fundamentals: API/schema design, SQL (Postgres), query optimization.
• Bias toward impact and rapid shipping, learning from production.
• Empathetic communicator who can explain ideas at different abstraction levels.
• Commitment to clean, bug‑free code and raising the engineering bar.

Required skills

• Python
• Node.js
• SQL / Postgres
• API design
• AWS services (Aurora, Elasticache, ECS/Fargate, Lambda, OpenSearch)
• Terraform
• CircleCI
• Observability tools (CloudWatch, Datadog, Mezmo)