Backend Engineer, AI Integrations

Sierra Studio is a product development company with a focus on AI – we turn our customers’ ideas into reality! We’re based in Los Angeles, but our teammates live all around the world. We create a wide variety of products for our customers: from LLM-powered web/mobile apps to cutting-edge work at the frontier of AI.

As a Backend Engineer focused on AI Integrations, you'll lead engineering on AI products that ship production ready generative AI features. You'll architect the stack, write clean code, integrate LLM APIs, own features end-to-end, and work with your teammates to take ideas from prototype to something clients can rely on.

This role sits between our Fullstack and AI tracks: strong fullstack engineering skills, plus hands-on experience at the application layer of AI: model APIs, retrieval, agentic engineering.

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  Client projects: Lead AI-powered product work for a startup: designing and shipping customer-facing AI experiences, from agent orchestration and tool use to the interfaces and backend systems that support them

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  Internal projects: Improve our own AI tooling and delivery practices

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  Hiring: Help us grow the team and interview future candidates

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  Leadership: Mentor other engineers to level up our team

We’re looking for a backend engineer with experience building LLM-powered products.

If you're excited about this role but don't check every box, we'd love to see your application anyway.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, including leading projects or people

• Backend experience: TypeScript or Python

• Experience with cloud infrastructure (e.g. Azure, GCP, AWS)

• Experience with databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc)

• Hands-on experience building with modern LLM APIs (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic)

• Experience with agentic products and prompt engineering

• Experience with the retrieval layer (e.g. RAG, embeddings, vector search)

• Experience writing and evaluating Claude Skills

• Know how to choose the right LLM for the right task, balancing quality, cost, and other factors

• Experience creating and integrating with MCP servers and converting API endpoints into tools

• Growth mindset: able to quickly learn new languages, frameworks, and more

• Strong written + verbal communication skills in English

• Ability to accurately estimate timelines and scope

• Experience using AI for coding (e.g. Claude Code, Codex)

Great to have:

• Experience with system administration, internal workspaces, and IT infra (e.g. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Sharepoint)

• Experience connecting Cowork / ChatGPT Work to internal data sources

• Experience with integrating Microsoft 365 with AI systems

• Experience building data ingestion pipelines

• Experience in the financial sector

Bonus – nice to have:

• Consulting, product studio, or multi-client delivery experience

• Things you've built that you'd like to show us — work projects, open source, or side projects all count!

Fully remote, with flexible hours. We care about output, not hours online. We support work-life balance for teammates at every life stage.

• Growth mindset: We look to magnify our strengths, take chances, and always learn from our mistakes.

• Supportive: We keep our egos out of the workplace and support each other when trying new things.

• Product & customer centric: We care deeply about our customers and clients and always keep their needs top of mind. We build tech to solve real problems.

• Ownership: We take initiative, even when it is “not our job.” As a startup, we all wear lots of hats.