Software Engineer - Backend/Distributed Systems

Role Overview

We're hiring a Distributed Systems / Backend Engineer to serve as a key contributor on the core backend platform powering Emerald AI. This is a high-impact role: you will drive architectural decisions, introduce best practices, build foundational infrastructure, and help guide the evolution of our real-time energy intelligence engine.

What You Will Do

Designing and scaling systems that interact with real-world energy infrastructure, building high-performance services and APIs that power core product workflows, tackling hard problems in reliability, data modeling, and system design.

Why It Might Be a Fit

Engineers who want to build, not just maintain, people who take ownership without waiting for permission, those who enjoy figuring things out when the path isn’t obvious, engineers who care about both technical excellence and real-world impact.

Requirements

• Experience with distributed systems or data-intensive applications
• Experience building and operating backend or infrastructure systems with a focus on reliability, performance, and scalability
• Interest in grid systems, energy orchestration, and applying AI to real-world infrastructure
• Experience working on real-time or near real-time systems
• Comfort operating in ambiguous environments and turning open-ended problems into production systems
• Strong system design skills, including tradeoffs across latency, consistency, and scalability
• Ability to work across the stack when needed to unblock progress

Benefits

• Competitive pay + equity
• Stock options
• Comprehensive benefits
• 401(k) matching
• Flexible location
• Work from D.C., Boston, or the Bay Area, with 1 WFH day/week