About the Role
Join a small, high-ownership product team as a backend-leaning product engineer focused on building real-world AI and automation products. This role matters because you'll own customer-facing features end-to-end, navigate messy integrations and legacy systems, and make product and engineering trade-offs with speed and strong judgment.
What You'll Do
Own features end-to-end from design through shipping and iteration
Make product and engineering decisions independently without heavy PM support
Execute under pressure and deliver high-quality engineering results, not just plans
Build and maintain backend systems, APIs, data models, and automation pipelines
Integrate with external tools, legacy systems, and messy third-party services
Design workflows and orchestration for AI/automation-driven products
Work comfortably in a very small, fast-moving startup team with little structure
Balance full-stack work when required, with a clear emphasis on backend ownership
Debug production issues and exercise strong engineering judgment
Collaborate closely with founders, customers, and cross-functional stakeholders
What We're Looking For
Early engineer, founding engineer, startup generalist, or strong product/backend engineer from a scaling startup
Track record of shipping real products, ideally 0-to-1 or in ambiguous/messy environments
Experience with backend systems, APIs, data modeling, automation, and integrations
Applied AI or workflow/orchestration experience (agentic workflows, RAG, LLM-enabled features) is a plus
Python experience is a plus; modern web/backend stacks are acceptable—stack fit matters less than raw engineering quality
Demonstrated ownership of customer-facing features and close work with founders or customers
Clear motivation for early-stage startup work and comfort with ambiguity and speed
Not a fit: frontend-only, data-only/internal-tools-only, pure DevOps/SRE without product ownership, pure research/ML without shipping experience, or candidates motivated primarily by corporate titles
Compensation & Details
Base compensation up to $275k plus meaningful equity.
Location
San Francisco, CA, USA. Hybrid/in-office required. Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to the area.
Other open roles at Clera(6)
Clera is an AI Talent Agent that connects stellar talent with elite jobs at high-growth startups funded by a16z, Index, YC, GC and more.
Key team members
Sebastian Scott
Kieran O'Connor
Alexander Farr
Daniel Wintermeyer
Jobr aggregates jobs directly from company career portals — no middlemen. Our team applies on your behalf with AI-tailored resumes, reviewed by a human before submission.