Senior SWE, Backend jobs in United States
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Medal · 16 hours ago

Senior SWE, Backend

positionSan Francisco, CA
timeFull-time
remoteOnsite
senioritySenior Level
money$180K/yr - $250K/yr
date5+ years exp

Highlight AI is a company focused on building the intelligent OS for the agentic age, and they are seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer to own critical backend infrastructure. The role involves building scalable systems, improving performance, and collaborating cross-functionally to ensure a reliable and efficient user experience.

GamingOnline GamesVideo GamesVideo Streaming

Responsibilities

Build backend systems that support product growth, including multi-tenant foundations, permissions, and internal/admin tooling
Design and operate asynchronous processing systems for background workloads and workflow orchestration
Improve system performance and cost through practical optimizations (caching, batching, efficient data access patterns)
Build secure, extensible integration infrastructure (authentication, APIs, third-party connectors)
Raise the bar on backend engineering quality through observability, testing, incident readiness, and operational best practices
Collaborate cross-functionally to ship features end-to-end while designing backend systems that are durable, extensible, and easy to iterate on

Qualification

Backend systemsDistributed systemsReal-time systemsMulti-tenant systemsPerformance optimizationAPIsMonitoringDebuggingCommunicationCollaborative mindsetOwnership mentalityDetail-oriented

Required

5+ years of experience at a fast-moving startup with experience shipping production backend systems
Comfort owning systems end-to-end: from architecture and implementation to deployment, monitoring, and debugging
Experience building reliable distributed systems (APIs, databases, async jobs, queues, pipelines)
Experience building real-time systems (WebSockets, pub/sub, event fanout) with low-latency and reliability at scale
Experience building enterprise-ready multi-tenant systems, including team management, roles/permissions, and admin/internal tooling
Data driven orientation: Be able to effectively measure what you've built
Ownership mentality (no task is too small for you) – it's all hands on deck here and we need everyone rowing the boat
Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset – we're extremely lean so we're looking for a team player who works well with others
Type-A tendencies: maybe you're extremely detail-oriented. Or maybe you take pride in shipping high-quality products. Whatever it is you do, you give it your all
Must be based in or willing to relocate to NYC or SF – although we're flexible with days off & schedules, we have a 100% in-office culture during the week

Preferred

Familiarity with LLM product infrastructure patterns (caching, batching, evals, integrations) is a plus

Benefits

Health, dental, and vision insurance
Flexible PTO and parental leave
Paid team lunches and dinners during the week
Relocation package

Company

Medal

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Medal is a developer of a short-form gaming video clips platform to share digital game clips and highlights with gamers.
dateFounded in 2015
location
Naarden, Noord-Holland, NLD
people-size51-200 employees
web-link
https://medal.tv

Funding

Current Stage
Growth Stage
Total Funding
$85.5M
Key Investors
OMERS VenturesMakers FundHorizons Ventures
2024-07-11Series Unknown· $13M
2021-12-14Series C· $45M
2020-01-01Series B· $15M

Leadership Team

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Iggy Harmsen
Product
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J
Joshua Lipson
Chief Architect
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Recent News

Portugal Business News & Insights | Portugal Resident
MEDAL opens a new office in Lagos
2025-12-10
startupticker.ch
General Intuition raises USD 134 million
2025-10-18
Silicon Canals
Meet General Intuition: AI gaming startup co-founded by Dutch entrepreneur and Medal spin-off raises €114M Seed round
2025-10-18
Company data provided by crunchbase