Profound · 4 months ago
Software Engineer, Backend (Workflow Runner)
New York City
Full-time
Onsite
Mid Level
$170K/yr - $240K/yrProfound is building the foundational agentic layer for modern companies, and they are seeking a Software Engineer for their backend workflow runner. In this role, you will design and implement core workflow engine primitives and backend services to create scalable, reliable workflows.
AnalyticsArtificial Intelligence (AI)SEO
Responsibilities
Build core workflow engine primitives used to orchestrate agents, tools, and dataflows
Own the real-time control plane: streaming events, reliable job orchestration, idempotency, and replay
Ship high-leverage systems that turn prototypes into production-grade, scalable workflows
Design and ship Rust-first backend services and clean APIs for creating, executing, and supervising graph/DAG workflows
Build reliable job orchestration with multiple response modes (blocking, streaming, fire-and-forget) and durable state
Strengthen tenant isolation, security, and access patterns across the platform
Improve runtime behavior: scheduling, backpressure, timeouts, retries, and idempotency
Evolve schemas and repositories; own migrations, indexing, and query performance
Instrument with meaningful telemetry; raise the bar on testing and operational excellence
Partner closely with product, frontend, and data teams to deliver high-impact features
Qualification
Required
Strong portfolio or GitHub showing backend/system design depth
Proficient in a modern systems language (Rust ideal); comfortable owning services end-to-end in production
Solid with SQL and relational data modeling; hands-on with PostgreSQL
Experience with distributed systems patterns: messaging/streaming (Kafka or NATS), retries, idempotency, backpressure
Familiar with caching/state systems (e.g., Redis) and real-time delivery (SSE/WebSockets)
Strong grasp of API authn/authz, multi-tenancy, and security best practices
Pragmatic, collaborative, and product-minded; thrive in a fast, in-person environment
Preferred
Built or operated workflow engines, schedulers, or agent runtimes
Experience with Postgres RLS and data governance at scale
Practical exposure to containerization (Docker), CI/CD, and cloud environments
Background integrating external AI/model providers and securing provider configs
Benefits
Equity
Comprehensive benefits
Company
Profound
Profound is an AI visibility and content optimization platform that that helps brands optimize their visibility in generative AI search.
Founded in 2024
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Profound has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (4)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$58.5MKey Investors
Sequoia CapitalKleiner PerkinsSaga Ventures
2025-08-12Series B· $35M
2025-06-18Series A· $20M
2024-08-13Seed· $3.5M
Leadership Team
James Cadwallader
Co-Founder, CEO
Dylan Babbs
Co-founder, CTO
Recent News
Company data provided by crunchbase