Hark
Backend Engineer
San Jose · Full-time
Sponsorship not specified$170k-$400kDetected 83 days ago
JavaGoRustC++Backend DevelopmentVector DatabasesAWSGCPKubernetesgRPCWebSocketsLLMsAgentic AIAI OrchestrationTCP/IPCommunication
About the role
- That means the hard infrastructure problems: high-concurrency services, low-latency streaming, state management for long-running agent workflows, and the execution layer that connects model outputs to real-world actions.
- This is a high-ownership role on a small team.
Responsibilities
- Core Runtime Architecture: Design and build the high-concurrency backend services responsible for agent orchestration, tool execution, and real-time streaming.
- Systems Reliability: Develop robust failure-handling, retry logic, and state management for long-running agentic workflows.
- Performance Engineering: Optimize the stack for low-latency streaming and high-throughput data processing to ensure seamless agent-user interactions.
- Full-Cycle Ownership: Lead features from low-level design and prototyping to production deployment, monitoring, and performance tuning.
- You'll work directly with model researchers and platform engineers, and the systems you build will determine whether Hark feels like a slow chatbot or something genuinely new.
- Design and build the high-concurrency backend services responsible for agent orchestration, tool execution, and real-time streaming.
- Develop robust failure-handling, retry logic, and state management for long-running agentic workflows.
- Lead features from low-level design and prototyping to production deployment, monitoring, and performance tuning.
- You'll build the backend systems that make Hark's AI agent actually work - reliable, fast, and production-grade.
- Hark is an artificial intelligence company building advanced, personalized intelligence.
Requirements
- Backend & Systems Mastery: 5+ years of experience building mission-critical backend systems.
- You are an expert in concurrency, networking protocols, and distributed systems.
- Production at Scale: Proven track record of shipping APIs and infrastructure that handle real-world traffic, with a deep understanding of horizontal scaling and "day 2" operations.
- AI System Intuition: Experience integrating LLMs into backend pipelines.
- Language Proficiency: Strong experience in at least one systems-level language (e.g., Go, Rust, C++, or Java).
- 5+ years of experience building mission-critical backend systems.
- Strong experience in at least one systems-level language (e.g., Go, Rust, C++, or Java).
Nice to have
- Hands-on experience with gRPC, WebSockets for high-performance streaming.
- Prior work with vector databases, distributed caching, or custom memory management systems.
- Deep knowledge of Kubernetes, microservices security, or serverless execution patterns.
- The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
- This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.
Compensation
- The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $170,000 - $400,000 annually.
- The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
- The total compensation package may also include additional components and benefits depending on the specific role.
- This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.
Benefits
- One that is proactive, multimodal, and capable of interacting with the world through speech, text, vision, and persistent memory.
- Implement deep instrumentation and automated evaluation frameworks to track system health and model quality regressions.
This listing is sourced directly from Hark's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.