Backend Engineer, Database

About the team Adaptive ML is a frontier AI startup building a Reinforcement Learning Operations (RLOps) platform that enables enterprises to specialize and deploy LLMs into production with measurable impact. We provide the core infrastructure to tune, evaluate, and serve specialized models at scale — pioneering task-specific LLM development and running production-ready workflows that serve millions of requests while optimizing for cost and performance across distributed systems. Our tightly-knit team was previously involved in the creation of state-of-the-art open-access large language models. We raised a $20M seed led by Index Ventures and ICONIQ in early 2024, and we are already live in production with customers including Manulife, AT&T, and Deloitte across travel and financial services — with much more to be announced soon. About the role As a Backend Engineer on our Product Team, you will help transform our technology into exceptional products. Our products allow companies to build more singular generative AI experiences with deeper personalization through reinforcement learning. We prioritize product quality, with a bias for clarity, responsiveness, and robustness, achieved through attention to detail across frontend and backend systems. You will own the database and data infrastructure layer of our product, collaborating closely with frontend and Technical Staff to implement new features and keep our systems reliable at scale. Challenges include designing high-availability PostgreSQL systems that handle heavy transactional workloads, and architecting ClickHouse pipelines for large-scale analytical queries — all in service of a product that demands both speed and correctness. We are looking for self-driven, ambitious individuals who combine strong backend engineering fundamentals with deep database expertise. As this is an early role, you will have the opportunity to shape our product team as we grow. This is an in-person role based out of our Paris Office. Your responsibilities Design, iterate, and implement the backend data layer powering our products; Own the architecture and operation of high-availability, high-throughput PostgreSQL systems; Build and maintain ClickHouse pipelines for analytics and large-scale event data at production scale; Develop high-quality Rust software, with elevated standards of performance and robustness; Define systematic processes for data modeling, schema evolution, and reliability across our stack; Contribute to our product roadmap, aligning the needs of our Commercial Team with the latest advancements from our Technical Team; Report clearly on your work to a distributed collaborative team, with a bias for asynchronous written communication. Your (ideal) background Significant experience in backend or infrastructure software development; Deep, hands-on expertise with PostgreSQL at scale — replication, failover, connection pooling, query optimization, and schema design under high transactional load; Production experience with ClickHouse — ingestion pipelines, data modeling for analytical workloads, and performance tuning at scale; Strong software engineering skills, with a focus on robustness and performance; A track record of shipping ambitious technical products under tight deadlines; A deep concern for user experience, and how data infrastructure choices manifest in product quality; Passionate about the future of generative AI, and eager to build foundational technology to help machines deliver more singular experiences. Comfortable leveraging AI-assisted programming tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, or similar) as part of an established personal workflow to ship faster and with greater confidence. Experience with observability tooling — monitoring, alerting, and distributed tracing (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) — is a plus. Benefits Comprehensive medical (health, dental, and vision) insurance for you and your dependents; 401(k) plan with 4% matching (or local equivalent); Unlimited PTO — we strongly encourage at least 5 weeks each year; Wellbeing and personal development stipends; Quarterly team offsites and frequent get togethers; Visa sponsorship if you wish to relocate to New York or Paris.