Senior Backend Software Engineer at Highlight AI

Location: New York, New York
Type: Full-time
Level: Senior
Posted: Jan 13, 2026

Description

Highlight AI is seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer to develop and maintain critical backend infrastructure, including systems for team management, permissions, LLM efficiency, and integration-driven workflows. The role requires scaling systems with a focus on performance, reliability, and user experience, working at the intersection of desktop software, native development, and AI integration. This on-site position requires five days a week in the office.

Required Skills

Backend Development
LLM Optimization
System Design
OAuth
Integrations
Asynchronous Processing

Additional Information

Required Previous Experiences: 5+ years of experience at a fast-moving startup, and has owned a complex project end-to-end or executed on a substantial portion of the work themselves.
Preferred Qualifications: OAuth + integrations platform experience: has built OAuth flows end-to-end (token refresh, scopes, revocation) and shipped multi-integration systems.
Designed roles/permissions models, audit logging, and team admin tooling for a B2B product.
Optimized LLM cost + latency : has shipped prompt caching, batching, or routing in production.
Built durable background job systems (queues, retries, idempotency) that power critical product flows.
Data driven orientation: Be able to effectively measure what you’ve built.
Ownership mentality (no task is too small for you) – it’s all hands on deck here and we need everyone rowing the boat.
Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset – we’re extremely lean so we’re looking for a team player who works well with others.
Type-A tendencies: maybe you’re extremely detail-oriented. Or maybe you take pride in shipping high-quality products. Whatever it is you do, you give it your all.