Senior Engineer, Backend & AI Systems

VARITE is looking for qualified Senior Engineer, Backend & AI Systems in San Francisco, CA (Hybrid)

WHAT THE CLIENT DOES?

An American computer software company that offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through video/audio editing, mobile app development, print layout and animation software.

WHAT WE DO?

Established in the Year 2000, VARITE is an award-winning minority business enterprise providing global consulting & staffing services to Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies. With 850+ global consultants, VARITE is committed to delivering excellence to its customers by leveraging its global experience and expertise in providing comprehensive scientific, engineering, technical, and non-technical staff augmentation and talent acquisition services.

Job Title:

Senior Engineer, Backend & AI Systems

Location:

San Francisco, CA 95110 (Hybrid)

Contract Duration:

3 months with possible extension

Pay Range:

$65.00/hr. to $70.42/hr. on W2

Work Authorization:

US Citizen or Green Card only

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL DO

About the Role:

Client is building an AI-native data visualization creative platform, built to turn anyone into a confident data storytelling. Our app, which is in the early alpha stages, helps people go from raw data to compelling, publication-quality charts without needing to be a data scientist or designer. We're a small, fast-moving incubator team that ships production software and cares deeply about the craft. We're looking for a senior backend engineer with a strong AI systems background to help us build the intelligence layer that makes our service feel like it actually understands data. You'll work across our fluency engine, composition pipeline, and agentic infrastructure, and have a direct hand in how the product reasons about data and communicates with users. We're a small team with real ownership. The problems are genuinely hard, the feedback loop is short, and the work ships to real users inside one of the largest creative platforms in the world.

What You'll Work On:

• Design and evolve our GraphQL API and the services behind it (Node.js, Postgres, S3, Docker/Kubernetes)
• Build and improve AI-powered features: chart recommendation, data fluency, narrative generation, and agentic workflows that act on user intent
• Own the eval infrastructure by defining what "good” looks like for our AI systems, build LLM-as-judge pipelines, and drive quality improvements from signal
• Work across our composer and fluency engines: the systems that translate user data and intent into visual output
• Contribute to architecture decisions: schema design, data loading and processing patterns, and pipeline orchestration
• Partner closely with frontend engineers and designers (who often work directly in the codebase) to ship full features end-to-end

Skills: What We're Looking For:

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience, with strong TypeScript/Node.js fundamentals
• Hands-on experience building with LLMs: prompt engineering, structured outputs, tool use, retrieval, caching strategies, and cost/latency tradeoffs
• Experience with agentic architectures: multi-step reasoning, tool-calling agents, orchestration patterns, and the failure modes that come with them
• You think carefully about eval infrastructure, not just whether the model works today, but how you'd know if it regressed tomorrow
• You write code that's clear, well-typed, and doesn't require a comment to explain what it does.
• You are comfortable moving quickly and leveraging AI assistance.
• You can understand tradeoffs, particularly when it comes to moving quickly and code quality.

Bonus Points:

• A genuine enthusiasm for data visualization. You find yourself opinionated about when to use a bar chart vs. a line chart, and you know why it matters
• Experience with LangSmith, LangFuse, or similar LLM observability tooling
• Familiarity with React and willingness to read and occasionally contribute to frontend code
• Prior experience in a design-adjacent or creative tools product

Education:

Tech We Use

Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, Apollo, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, Langchain, Vercel, Docker, Kubernetes, Nx monorepo, React 19, Vite, Vitest, Storybook, AWS, Azure

BENEFITS:

We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the health, well-being, and financial security of our employees and their families. Eligible employees may receive:

• Health Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Retirement Plans: Participation in a company-sponsored retirement savings plan.
• Legal Service Plans: Offering access to attorneys for legal advice and representation.

If this opportunity interests you, please respond by clicking on EasyApply. Know someone who would be perfect for this role? Refer to us and if they are hired, you could be eligible for our employee referral bonus! Help us grow our team with top talent from your network. VARITE is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.