--- title: Founding Backend Engineer at Clera in San Francisco, CA description: Clera is hiring for the Founding Backend Engineer role in San Francisco, CA. Pays $200K–$300K per year. See the full description and apply. type: job url: https://www.foundrole.com/jobs/founding-backend-engineer-at-clera-01a1db38-6c05-7e13-b146-4ef03544032b date: 2026-11-14T20:34:49Z og_description: Join Clera as Founding Backend Engineer in San Francisco, CA. Pays $200K–$300K per year. Full-time, on-site role. og_image: https://www.foundrole.com/og/1rx5rv.png breadcrumbs: - label: Home url: https://www.foundrole.com/ - label: Search url: https://www.foundrole.com/jobs --- | | | |---|---| | **Company** | Clera | | **Location** | San Francisco, CA | | **Salary** | $200K/yr - $300K/yr | | **Type** | Full Time | | **Posted** | Nov 14, 2026 | ## Is this job real? **Ghost job check:** B · Low risk. Probably a real opening. ## Visa sponsorship - **H-1B:** No H-1B sponsorship on record for Clera. - **E-Verify:** No E-Verify enrollment on record for Clera. ## Pay for similar jobs Most similar jobs pay $165,000 – $205,000 a year (median $180,000). ## Description ### About the Role As a founding backend engineer at an early-stage AI assistant company, you will own the reliable systems that power an AI agent communicating through text, email, and phone. This hands-on role spans designing, building, operating, and improving the backend infrastructure that keeps messages and scheduled actions working dependably. ### What You'll Do - Design and operate messaging pipelines for inbound and outbound communications, with reliable ordering, retries, and delivery. - Build the background agent runtime, including concurrency, timeouts, cancellation, and recovery from model or tool failures. - Develop scheduling systems that execute deferred actions reliably and in the correct time zone. - Use capacity planning, load testing, database optimization, and architectural improvements to prepare systems for growth. - Maintain secure data practices, including credential encryption, Postgres schema design and migrations, and privacy-related deletion workflows. - Build observability and cost tracking that trace messages through downstream model and tool calls. - Set backend engineering standards and help recruit and mentor future team members. ### What We're Looking For - At least 4 years of software engineering experience, including substantial production on-call responsibility. - Deep distributed-systems experience with queues, workers, retries, idempotency, and production failure modes. - Experience scaling production systems through rapid growth and making sound architectural tradeoffs. - Production experience with Postgres, including schema design, migrations, and performance tuning, as well as cloud infrastructure and infrastructure as code. - Production experience with TypeScript or Python. - Experience building messaging, telephony, or event-driven systems where dropped or duplicated events have meaningful consequences. - Experience with observability, tracing, capacity planning, and measuring latency and cost across distributed systems. - A hands-on approach to technical leadership, plus the ability to verify and own code produced with AI-assisted development tools. ### Compensation & Benefits Base salary: $200,000 to $300,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available. ### Location Full-time, on-site in San Francisco, California. ## Skills - AI-Assisted Software Development - Technical Leadership - Message Queues - Infrastructure as Code (IaC) - Encryption - Python - Observability - Performance Tuning - Database Optimization - Distributed Tracing - PostgreSQL - Idempotency - AI Agent Runtime - TypeScript - Database Design - Phone Systems - Cloud Infrastructure - Concurrent Programming - Scheduling Software - Back End (Software Engineering) - On-Call Coverage - Communication - Event-Driven Architecture - Equities - Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (Fmea) - Outbound Sales - Distributed Systems - Capacity Planning ## Related - [Technology & Software jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Software Development jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software/software-development?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Software Developer / Engineer jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/careers/technology-and-software/software-development/software-developer-engineer?utm_source=ai_markdown)- [Browse all companies](https://www.foundrole.com/companies?utm_source=ai_markdown) ## Explore this job market - [California](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 260765 jobs - [San Francisco, CA](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california/san-francisco?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 27854 jobs - [Executive Search Services](https://www.foundrole.com/sectors/staffing-and-recruiting/executive-search-services?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 11465 jobs ## Related pages - [California](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 260765 jobs - [San Francisco, CA](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us/california/san-francisco?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 27854 jobs - [Executive Search Services](https://www.foundrole.com/sectors/staffing-and-recruiting/executive-search-services?utm_source=ai_markdown) — 11465 jobs ## Browse - [Companies](https://www.foundrole.com/companies?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Jobs by country](https://www.foundrole.com/locations?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Jobs in the United States by state and city](https://www.foundrole.com/locations/us?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [H1B sponsors by location](https://www.foundrole.com/h1b-sponsors?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [H1B salaries](https://www.foundrole.com/h1b-salaries?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Sectors and industries](https://www.foundrole.com/sectors?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Jobs by career field](https://www.foundrole.com/careers?utm_source=ai_markdown) - [Latest jobs](https://www.foundrole.com/jobs/latest?utm_source=ai_markdown)