AI Engineer, Backend

About the Job

Who You Are Is What You Do.

The company is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams. Our vision is to unlock global opportunity for every person, team, and business. Built for the way the world works today, the company combines HRIS, payroll, compliance, benefits, performance, and equipment management into one seamless platform. With AI-powered tools and a fully owned payroll infrastructure, the company supports every worker type in 150+ countries—helping businesses scale smarter, faster, and more compliantly. Among the largest globally distributed companies in the world, our team of 7,000 spans more than 100 countries, speaks 74 languages, and brings a connected and dynamic culture that drives continuous learning and innovation for our customers.

As the fastest-growing Software as a Service (SaaS) company in history, the company is transforming how global talent connects with world-class companies – breaking down borders that have traditionally limited both hiring and career opportunities. We're not just building software; we're creating the infrastructure for the future of work, enabling a more diverse and inclusive global economy. In 2024 alone, we paid $11.2 billion to workers in nearly 100 currencies and provided healthcare and benefits to workers in 109 countries—ensuring people get paid and protected, no matter where they are.

Our momentum is reflected in our achievements and customer satisfaction: CNBC Disruptor 50, Forbes Cloud 100, Deloitte Fast 500, and repeated recognition on Y Combinator's top companies list – all while maintaining a 4.83 average rating from 15,000 reviews across G2, Trustpilot, Capterra, Apple, and Google. Your experience at the company will be a career accelerator. At the forefront of the global work revolution, you'll tackle complex challenges that impact millions of people's working lives. With our momentum—backed by a $17.3 billion valuation and $1 B in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in just over five years—you'll drive meaningful impact while building expertise that makes you a sought-after leader in the transformation of global work.

Summary

The Backend Engineer, AI plays a critical role in shipping features faster while maintaining quality and reliability. This role focuses on using AI tools like Claude to accelerate development workflows, shipping robust backend solutions at the company Speed without sacrificing excellence. By leveraging AI as a co-pilot while maintaining strong engineering fundamentals, this role is essential for building scalable, production-grade features that drive business objectives and enhance user satisfaction across 150+ countries.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with Product Managers, Frontend Engineers, Designers, and QA professionals to understand requirements, scope features, and create seamless experiences.
• Use AI coding tools like Claude to accelerate feature development—generating code, handling boilerplate, and writing scaffolding. You review all AI-generated code critically before shipping.
• Build and ship AI products, workflows, and agents.
• From discovery to deployment, provide your technical input throughout all stages of the Software Development Lifecycle, including architecture decisions, design feedback, and deployment strategy.
• Collaborate to develop robust new features, APIs, databases, and infrastructure. Help find and fix bugs at the company Speed while maintaining high-quality standards.
• Ship features end-to-end with ownership: design, develop, test, deploy, monitor, and iterate.
• Ensure top-tier products and services through quality engineering, rigorous testing, and attentive, customer-focused development.
• Communicate constantly with cross-functional teams. Explain technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders. Translate requirements into solutions. Keep everyone aligned.
• Unblock teams by answering questions clearly, debugging issues fast, and proposing solutions to ambiguous problems.

Qualifications

• At least 3 years of experience as a Backend/Software Engineer. You've shipped real AI products, features, debugged production issues, and thought about scale.
• Experience developing with NodeJS or Python. You write clean, maintainable code comfortably. You understand patterns, conventions, and best practices. Syntax is muscle memory.
• You know SQL and NoSQL fundamentals. Particularly strong with PostgreSQL and ORM libraries (such as Sequelize, TypeORM, or similar). You can write queries, optimize performance, and design schemas with purpose.
• Demonstrated experience shipping real products using Claude. You've used AI to accelerate development and shipped features that work in production. You can prompt effectively, review AI-generated code critically, and know when to use AI versus write code manually.
• Excellent communication skills—written and verbal. You explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders clearly. You write clear documentation, code comments, and Slack updates. You ask good questions and proactively share context. Strong remote collaboration skills. You excel in async communication. You proactively communicate status, blockers, and decisions. You've successfully worked in distributed teams.
• Adheres to business processes and systems to meet company quality requirements. You follow the company's standards for code review, testing, deployment, and operational responsibility.
• Takes personal accountability for service excellence. You own your work from design to production. When something breaks, you fix it. When something's slow, you optimize it.
• Information security: Understands your role within the organization from an information security perspective and commits to protecting the organization's security and information assets. You follow best practices for secure coding, data handling, and compliance.
• Ensures cost savings and efficiencies in the area of accountability. You think about resource utilization, infrastructure costs, and team velocity. You don't waste effort or resources.

Total Rewards

Our workforce deserves fair and competitive pay that meets them where they are. With scalable benefits, rewards, and perks, our total rewards programs reflect our commitment to inclusivity and access for all.

Some things you’ll enjoy

• Stock grant opportunities dependent on your role, employment status, and location.
• Additional perks and benefits based on your employment status and country.
• The flexibility of remote work, including optional WeWork access.

The company is an equal-opportunity employer that values diversity and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of race, religion, sex, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, pregnancy or maternity, or other legally protected characteristics.