Government & Defense Tech Startup • San Francisco (On-site)

Location

San Francisco, California (on-site, 5 days/week)

Compensation

$180k–$240k + $50k–$500k equity · on-site in San Francisco · one to two weeks a month on customer sites

About the company

Our client is a fast-growing AI startup changing how the US government and its allies buy and field technology. Founded in 2024, the team is around a dozen people in San Francisco — a mix of operators from high-growth startups and people who have worked inside defense and government institutions — and they are venture-backed and scaling quickly. The work sits directly on top of real procurement and national-security problems.

The role

You would own the core backend and the architecture the whole platform runs on — maximum technical depth, minimal maintenance. This is a builder role: you take projects from early development through to completion in fast iteration cycles, working directly alongside the government and defense people who use the product. It is a genuinely customer-facing engineering job, and the travel is not incidental — expect to spend one to two weeks a month on military bases with your end users.

What you'll do

Design and build the core backend architecture powering the AI platform
Own backend systems end to end — data pipelines, API design, deployment and scaling
Build and integrate AI agents and LLM-powered workflows into the product
Work directly with government and defense end users, and turn what you learn on site into shipped features
Ship daily alongside a small, high-output engineering team
Travel to military bases for one to two weeks a month

What we're looking for

These are hard requirements. Check each one that applies to you.

Please note: every item above is a hard requirement for this role. Applications that don't meet all of them will be rejected. We recommend applying only if you check every box.

Don't check every box? No worries — submit your info here and we'll keep you in mind for roles that could be a better fit.

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Nice to have

Experience with data pipelines or web scraping at scale
Prior defense, government or national-security project work
A background as a technical founder, founding engineer or forward-deployed engineer

Tech stack

Python, React, Next.js and TypeScript, with LLMs and AI agents throughout. Infrastructure runs on Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS and GCP.

Compensation & logistics

$180k–$240k base
$50k–$500k equity, vesting over 4 years
On-site in San Francisco, 5 days a week — this is not a remote or hybrid role
One to two weeks a month travelling to military bases
US citizens only — no visa sponsorship, and green card holders are not eligible for this role
Roughly 2 to 8 years of experience as a full-stack engineer, back-end leaning (about 70/30)
3 to 4 hires planned
Full-time

Backend Platform Engineer