Software Engineer, Backend, Workflow Runner

Profound Technologies Inc.

Job Overview

Location

New York City, New York, USA

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Join Profound Technologies Inc. as a Backend Software Engineer, focusing on our groundbreaking Workflow Runner, the core execution engine that transforms complex AI tasks into robust, scalable, and composable workflows. This is a unique opportunity to architect and build the foundational agentic layer for modern enterprises, directly impacting how intelligent systems operate at scale.
• You will be instrumental in shaping the core primitives that define our workflow execution. This includes designing and implementing the mechanisms for orchestrating agents, integrating diverse tools, and managing intricate dataflows. Your work will directly influence the reliability and efficiency of AI-powered processes.
• Take ownership of the real-time control plane, a critical component responsible for managing the dynamic flow of information and execution. This involves ensuring reliable job orchestration, implementing robust idempotency mechanisms to prevent duplicate operations, and enabling seamless replay capabilities for fault tolerance and debugging.
• You will be tasked with shipping high-leverage systems that bridge the gap between experimental prototypes and production-grade, scalable workflows. This requires a deep understanding of system design, performance optimization, and the ability to anticipate and address the challenges of operating at scale.
• Design and implement backend services, with a strong emphasis on Rust, to create clean, well-defined APIs. These APIs will be used for the creation, execution, and supervision of complex graph or Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) workflows, providing developers with intuitive interfaces for building sophisticated AI applications.
• Build and refine reliable job orchestration capabilities, supporting multiple response modes such as blocking operations for immediate results, streaming for continuous updates, and fire-and-forget for asynchronous tasks. Ensuring durable state management across all these modes is paramount.
• Significantly enhance tenant isolation, security, and access control patterns across the entire platform. This is crucial for ensuring data privacy, compliance, and secure operation in multi-tenant environments.
• Drive improvements in runtime behavior, focusing on key aspects like intelligent scheduling algorithms, effective backpressure management to prevent system overload, precise timeout configurations, and sophisticated retry strategies to ensure task completion.
• Evolve the underlying schemas and data repositories, taking responsibility for migrations, optimizing indexing strategies, and ensuring high query performance. This involves meticulous data management and performance tuning.
• Instrument systems with meaningful telemetry to provide deep insights into performance and behavior. Raise the bar on testing methodologies and operational excellence, ensuring the platform is robust, reliable, and maintainable.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and data scientists to deliver high-impact features that align with our strategic vision and meet the needs of our users. This cross-functional partnership is key to our success.
• Contribute to the architectural decisions and technical roadmap for the Workflow Runner, influencing the future direction of our core technology. Your insights and contributions will be vital in building a leading-edge platform.
• Debug and resolve complex issues in a distributed system environment, leveraging your understanding of system interactions and potential failure points.
• Participate in code reviews, providing constructive feedback to peers and ensuring adherence to high coding standards and best practices.
• Stay abreast of the latest advancements in AI, distributed systems, and backend technologies, bringing innovative ideas and solutions to the team.
• Contribute to a culture of continuous learning and improvement, sharing knowledge and mentoring junior engineers when appropriate.

🎯 Requirements

• Proven experience in backend or systems design, demonstrated through a strong portfolio of projects or a well-maintained GitHub profile.
• Proficiency in a modern systems programming language, with Rust being highly preferred. Must be comfortable owning backend services end-to-end in a production environment.
• Solid understanding and hands-on experience with SQL and relational data modeling, particularly with PostgreSQL.
• Experience with distributed systems patterns, including messaging queues or streaming platforms, implementing retries, idempotency, and backpressure mechanisms.
• Familiarity with caching systems (e.g., Redis) and state management, as well as real-time data delivery techniques like Server-Sent Events (SSE) or WebSockets.
• Strong grasp of API authentication and authorization, multi-tenancy concepts, and general security best practices.
• Experience building or operating workflow engines, schedulers, or agent runtimes is a significant plus.
• Practical exposure to containerization technologies (e.g., Docker), CI/CD pipelines, and cloud environments (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Background integrating with external AI or model providers and securing their configurations.
• Experience with Rust 2024, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka or NATS, containers, modern CI/CD, and real-time streaming to clients is highly desirable.

🏖️ Benefits

• Competitive base salary range of $140,000 to $260,000 (NY), commensurate with experience and qualifications.
• Meaningful equity in a rapidly growing startup.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans.
• Generous paid time off (PTO) and company holidays.
• Support for visa sponsorship for qualified international candidates.
• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure and shape the future of agentic computing.
• Collaborative and fast-paced work environment in our New York City office.
• Professional development opportunities and a culture that encourages learning and growth.

Skills & Technologies

Rust

PostgreSQL

Redis

GitHub

Kafka

Backend

Onsite

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Profound Technologies Inc.

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About Profound Technologies Inc.

Profound Technologies Inc. operates an AI-powered platform that connects businesses with vetted software development teams and engineers worldwide. The company uses machine-learning algorithms to match projects with the best-fit talent, handling sourcing, vetting, contracts, and payments so clients can accelerate product delivery. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, Profound serves startups and Fortune 500 companies across fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce, providing flexible staff augmentation and full project outsourcing while enabling remote engineers to access high-quality opportunities.

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