# Backend Software Engineer

**Company:** [Sesame](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/sesame)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, Bellevue, WA, New York, NY
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $175k – $280k/yr
**Skills:** Python, Kubernetes, GCP, Rest, WebSockets, gRPC, Postgres, NoSQL, Distributed Systems, Caching
**Posted:** 2026-04-24

> Builds scalable backend systems for voice AI agents, owning data models, APIs, distributed services, ML-integrated architectures, and reliability. Requires strong distributed systems, database, and networking expertise with production-scale experience.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design and build the backend systems and services that power Sesame's product. Own the data models, the APIs, and the distributed systems.
- Write software that's built to last, focusing on scalability, reliability, and correctness.
- Build and evolve frameworks and libraries that other engineers build on.
- Own the full lifecycle of services: schema design, implementation, deployment, performance tuning, and on-call.
- Work across the data layer, choosing and operating relational databases, NoSQL, queues, caches, search indexes.
- Identify performance bottlenecks and fix them, considering cost, throughput, and latency.
- Own the architecture of systems where ML models are critical: real-time audio pipelines, agentic orchestration, stateful conversation systems.
- Spot opportunities to improve developer efficiency and prototype tools or workflows.

## Required Qualifications
- Expert-level in at least one programming language; write clean, well-designed code.
- Solid distributed systems fundamentals: system models, failure modes, consistency tradeoffs, scaling strategies.
- Experience building systems at scale: caching layers, sharded data stores, async processing pipelines, shared-nothing architectures.
- Strong database engineering skills: complex schemas, query tuning, data modeling across relational and non-relational stores.
- Comfortable with protocols and networking: REST, WebSockets, gRPC, HTTP semantics.
- Deploy and run services on **Kubernetes**.
- Proven reliability engineering instincts from challenging on-call rotations.
- Genuine deep interest in an area of software (e.g., software design, CRDTs, real-time systems, database internals).

## Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience in: payments (billing, transaction processing, ledgers), search and relevance (search infrastructure, ranking, indexing), real-time media (streaming, low-latency audio/video, RTC).
- Deep **Python** expertise: maintainable, performant, scalable code.
- Experience building on **GCP**.

## Benefits
- 401(k) with 3.5% employer match.
- 100% employer-paid health, vision, dental for you and dependents.
- Unlimited PTO and sick time.
- FSA with employer matching up to $1,650/year.
- Guardian EAP.
- Competitive stock options.

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