backend engineer

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Please read first

This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio) - we work from the office 5 days a week.

You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting.

We require US work authorisation, but are open to O-1 visa sponsorship for truly exceptional candidates.

About Wordware

Wordware is an IDE for building AI agents using natural language.

It looks and feels like Notion, but lets you design, test, and deploy AI systems in real time - without writing code.

Our mission is to bring structure and joy to human–AI collaboration.

We’re building a generational company that empowers the next billion knowledge workers to create with AI - not by writing code, but by expressing intent.

We’re backed by Spark Capital, Felicis, and Y Combinator ($30M seed round - the largest in YC history).

We work hard, move fast, and don’t take ourselves too seriously. It’s intense, but it’s also fun - at Wordware, you’ll do the best work of your life alongside people you genuinely like.

Backend Engineer

What You’ll Do

You’ll design, build, and scale the backend systems that power Wordware — from real-time execution infrastructure to LLM orchestration and API integrations.

We’re still a small team, and the product is early — you won’t just be optimizing endpoints; you’ll help shape the foundation of the platform and how AI is built for the next decade.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of things you might work on:

Extend our executor: the runtime that turns natural language into live, traceable, long-running agent workflows — with pause/resume, retries, and real-time responsiveness.

Contribute to the Wordware programming language — our internal DSL for expressing logic, control flow, and agent interactions in plain English.

Design infrastructure for running thousands of concurrent AI agents, scaling from zero to high traffic in seconds.

Integrate external APIs like Slack, Notion, and Google Sheets — handling schema validation, error handling, and auth flows.

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Stack

Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, Redis.

Who You Are

Minimum

You have 4+ years of engineering experience, with a strong track record of shipping production systems.

You’re fluent in TypeScript or Node.js, and have experience designing and maintaining APIs, databases, and infrastructure.

You’ve built systems that scale and know how to handle load, retries, and observability in the real world.

You have a deep understanding of SQL — not just queries, but schema design, migrations, and performance tuning.

You’re comfortable with ambiguity, unblock yourself, and make thoughtful architecture decisions quickly.

You thrive in a fast-paced, high-trust startup environment and enjoy owning complex technical challenges.

Bonus (but not required)

You’ve worked on execution engines, compilers, or custom DSLs.

You’ve built or manipulated ASTs, interpreters, or schema-based transformation pipelines.

You’ve worked with Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, or other serverless compute platforms.

You’ve integrated deeply with third-party APIs and built robust systems around external failures.

You’ve been a founder or early team member and know what it means to build under pressure.

The Process

We keep our process simple. Exceptional candidates go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks.

Application

Submit your resume and answer a few short questions. If it looks like a fit, we’ll invite you to send a 1-minute Loom video: tell us who you are and why you want to join Wordware.

15-minute intro call

Quick check to align on location, motivation, and logistics. If it’s a go, we move fast from here.

45-minute technical interview

You’ll build a small full-stack app. We’re looking for fluency, speed, and product sense.

System design interview

A deep dive into how you think and architect systems. We’ll walk through a real Wordware problem together.

Final conversation

Quick vibe check, answer your questions, and scope out the work trial.

Work trial

Paid trial to work on a real project with us — usually a few days to two weeks (flexible to do what works for you). See how we work and whether this feels like the right fit on both sides.