[Remote] Backend Engineer

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. AlphaSignal is building the intelligence layer for AI, focusing on real-time data and machine-readable insights. The Backend Engineer will own the infrastructure and pipelines that support the AI platform and a large subscriber newsletter, ensuring reliability and performance of the code base.ResponsibilitiesYou'll own the pipeline behind the platform: scrapers, an LLM enrichment and editorial layer, a MongoDB data layer, a ranking system that decides what matters, and the foundations of our knowledge graphYou're responsible for the code feeding a product used by over a million people a monthWhen throughput drops or something breaks, you diagnose it, ship the fix, and verify the recoveryYou're a team of 10. You see a problem, you fix itSkills3+ years of backend engineering with production ownership of a non-trivial system - you got paged when it brokePython at a professional level - backend services, ML models, algorithms, and production-grade diagnostic scriptingDeep LLM fluency across providers (Claude, GPT, Gemini) - shipped production features, fluent with prompting, structured output, cost optimization, and failure modes. You treat prompts as engineering artifacts, not vibesDatabase depth - MongoDB, Postgres at scale, or comparable; indexes, query plans, atomicity, replicationML / vector search - recommendation systems, knowledge graphs, entity linking, and the full vector DB landscape (Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, Milvus, pgvector, Chroma, FAISS, plus Atlas/Elasticsearch/OpenSearch)Designed systems for large, growing traffic - caching, batching, async, and index tuning before things fall overAWS / infrastructure - comfortable deploying and operating services on EC2 and the broader Amazon suiteFluent with modern AI dev tooling (Cursor and similar)Solid engineering practices: observability, monitoring, ticketing, and keeping a codebase healthy as it scales. Ideally worked on a team of 5+ developersExperience at a high-traffic content platform (Medium, Substack, Reddit etc)Familiarity with arXiv, GitHub, Hugging Face, or X APIsContent systems: feeds, aggregators, recommendersScraping at scale, deeper prompt engineering, or early-stage startup experienceBenefitsFull ownership of a critical, high-impact system.Direct work with the founder.Real, visible impact in production — often within hours.Competitive compensation.Remote, async-first, low-meeting culture.Company OverviewAlphaSignal is the most-read news source for AI developers, engineers, and researchers—reaching 500K+ professionals. It was founded in 2020, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, with a workforce of 2-10 employees. Its website is https://AlphaSignal.ai.