Known is building a consumer AI product and needs a core technical founder to build the backend systems and infrastructure that will power the platform, enabling it to scale from thousands to millions of users.
Requirements
- Strong proficiency in TypeScript and Node.js with deep understanding of async patterns, performance optimization, and error handling.
- Expert-level knowledge of Postgres — you’re comfortable with complex queries, transactions, indexing, connection pooling, and performance tuning.
- Experience designing and scaling RESTful APIs with attention to rate limiting, authentication, caching, and versioning.
- Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) including compute, storage, databases, and networking services.
- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure-as-code tools.
- Experience with WebSockets and WebRTC for real-time communication systems.
- Strong understanding of observability and monitoring — logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting best practices.
Responsibilities
- Design and build scalable backend services in Node.js/TypeScript, including RESTful APIs, background job processing, and data pipelines that support both real-time and batch workloads.
- Architect and optimize database systems using Postgres — including schema design, query optimization, indexing strategies, and data integrity at scale.
- Implement real-time communication infrastructure using WebSockets for chat and WebRTC for audio/video, ensuring low latency and high reliability.
- Integrate and manage third-party services (OpenAI/Anthropic LLMs, Google/Apple Pay, reservation platforms, SMS/push notifications, CDNs) with robust error handling and monitoring.
- Collaborate with AI/ML engineers to build APIs and data pipelines that serve model predictions, handle training data collection, and support experimentation workflows.
- Own infrastructure, deployment, and observability — build CI/CD pipelines, implement monitoring and alerting, optimize cloud costs, and ensure system reliability as traffic scales.
- Design for performance and scale — implement caching strategies, optimize API response times, and architect systems that can handle 10x growth without rewrites.
Other
- 4–6 years building production backend systems, ideally in consumer products, high-traffic applications, or startups.
- You think about security, data privacy, and compliance as first-class concerns.
- This is a chance to be the infrastructure architect of a consumer AI product from day one
- You’ll have the autonomy to make foundational technical decisions and the responsibility to ensure Known can grow from thousands to millions of users without missing a beat.
