Founding Engineer (Backend)

Pally is an innovative AI Relationship Management Platform at the intersection of AI and human relationships. Founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator (S25), the company is building technology to help people manage and leverage their professional connections more effectively.

As a Founding Backend Engineer, you'll be joining at a crucial stage following their pre-seed round and YC acceptance. The role offers a unique opportunity to shape the technical foundation of a promising startup in the AI space. You'll be working directly with the founders to build and scale the platform's backend infrastructure, AI models, and agentic workflows.

The technical stack is modern and AI-focused, built primarily in Python with FastAPI, and hosted on Supabase and AWS (ECS and Lambda). The team works extensively with various AI models, particularly OpenAI's offerings, to power their intelligent relationship management features.

This is an ideal role for a senior engineer who wants to go beyond traditional engineering boundaries. You'll have shared ownership of the product, direct interaction with users, and the opportunity to influence both technical and product decisions. The role demands a deep understanding of large language models, including their training, fine-tuning, and deployment, combined with strong backend architecture and cloud infrastructure expertise.

The company culture emphasizes both high performance and work-life balance in an interesting way. While the expectations are high (60-80 hours per week), there's flexibility in when and how you work. The founders believe in maintaining strong personal relationships and encourage team members to be there for family and friends when needed.

Pally is backed by an impressive network, including cofounders from Hugging Face and Slack, the Head of Sales at Superhuman, Craft Ventures Scout Fund, a16z Scout Fund, and Founders Inc. This backing provides valuable resources and connections as you help build the future of AI-powered relationship management.

The compensation package is competitive, with a salary range of $120K-$240K and significant equity (0.50%-2.00%), reflecting the founding nature of the role. The position is based in San Francisco, requiring in-person work, which facilitates close collaboration with the founding team during this crucial growth phase.

This is an exceptional opportunity for a senior backend engineer who is passionate about AI, values meaningful human connections, and wants to be part of building something transformative from the ground up. The role combines technical challenges in AI and distributed systems with the opportunity to shape product strategy and company culture.