💻 Software Engineer, Backend (Senior)

💻 Software Engineer, Backend (Senior) ABOUT US Alpha is a product studio focused on the intersection of AI and consumer social – backed by a16z and many of the top investors in the world. Our goal is to create social products that we use, that our friends use, and that have the potential to reach billions of people. Clubhouse was our first app, and we’ve been quietly growing that while building our next set of products. We have years of runway, millions of users, and find ourselves at a very interesting time, where AI is making entirely new things possible with voice. If you are a talented builder who’s interested in joining us, we’d love to talk. THE ROLE We're hiring two Senior Backend Engineers to join our server engineering team. One role sits on our Core squad, which owns rapid product explorations, app quality, and monetization features for Clubhouse Plus users. The other sits on our Foundations squad, which builds the core distributed and shared services that product squads depend on. Both roles share the same bar: engineers who think at a systems level, ship with urgency, and build with a platform mindset — whether they're delivering a user-facing feature or designing a shared service. We'll place candidates into the squad that best matches their skills and interests during the interview process. You'll work in a highly collaborative environment with our founders, product, design, and data science to: - Solve a dynamic set of user and infrastructure problems across the product - Ship new product launches and platform capabilities at speed - Design services and abstractions that are reusable across squads — not just point solutions for a single feature - Improve our monetization features, app quality, and backend reliability - Iteratively improve a legacy codebase while keeping an eye on long-term maintainability We are a remote friendly-company — with a strong commitment to ensuring you will do great work here and have best professional experience of your life. This role is open to candidates across the U.S. WHO YOU ARE - You are experienced and curious. You have 4–5 years of backend development experience with a strong foundation in languages like Python or Java, and experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB). You’re eager to deepen your technical craft and broaden your systems thinking. - You think at a systems level. You understand the tradeoffs in evolving a legacy codebase — balancing short-term velocity with long-term maintainability. You map out edge cases for experiments and features, considering performance, scaling, and data implications. You appreciate the practical cost of complexity and advocate for the simplest solution that achieves the intended outcome. - You build with a platform mindset. You think about API contracts, shared infrastructure, and distributed systems patterns as first-class concerns — even when shipping product features. You can identify when a product need is better served by investing in a shared service versus a one-off implementation, and you balance that tension pragmatically. - You have a product mindset. You connect backend work to measurable business impact. You think about how experiments tie to user growth and engagement, and you balance technical decisions with product outcomes. - You move quickly and iterate. You can scope and deliver MVPs to learn early, gather data, and iterate. You know how to balance speed and reliability so experiment results are trustworthy. - You work well cross-functionally. You enjoy partnering closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Data Scientists to shape hypotheses and act on results. You communicate tradeoffs clearly and can reframe constraints as opportunities. - You’re collaborative and low ego. You evolve your thinking based on new data, seek the best solution regardless of ownership, and contribute to a positive, inclusive team culture. WHAT YOU WILL DO - Build and ship experiments ... (truncated, view full listing at source)