Software Engineer, Backend
Location
Palo Alto HQ
Employment Type
Full time
Location Type
On-site
Department
Engineering
Compensation
base salary $250K – $350K
Overview
Application
About the Role
We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer, Backend, to lead and scale the backend infrastructure that powers Pika’s user-facing products. In this high-impact role, you’ll own the design and delivery of robust, scalable backend systems, APIs, and infrastructure that support real-time collaboration, AI-powered workflows, and seamless product experiences.
As a staff-level engineer, you will architect and implement core backend platforms—working closely with engineering, product, and design teams to deliver features that are reliable, performant, and secure. Your leadership in architectural decisions and backend best practices will shape the technical foundation of Pika for millions of users.
What You’ll Do
Lead Backend Platform Engineering: Architect and develop scalable, high-performing backend systems and APIs powering all Pika products and services.
Own Distributed Infrastructure: Build, maintain, and enhance distributed systems and infrastructure in a cloud environment (AWS/GCP), ensuring high availability and reliability.
Drive Large-Scale Projects: Take ownership of backend features and platforms from ideation through launch and ongoing iteration.
Enable Real-Time Interactions: Develop systems to support low-latency, real-time collaboration and messaging at scale.
Integrate Generative AI Systems: Design and optimize backend features that power creative, AI-driven product capabilities.
Champion Quality & Best Practices: Lead technical discussions, review code, drive backend architectural proposals, and mentor engineers to elevate standards across the team.
What We’re Looking For
Experience: 5+ years of backend software engineering experience, with at least 2+ years in senior backend roles delivering scalable APIs and infrastructure at scale.
Technical Mastery: Deep expertise in building distributed systems, RESTful and real-time APIs, and cloud-native infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, etc.).
System Design: Demonstrated strength in designing and implementing reliable, scalable backend services for high-traffic applications.
Product Focus: Track record of launching impactful backend features that balance technical quality with business needs.
Ownership & Initiative: Proven ability to independently lead complex projects, troubleshoot problems, and deliver impactful solutions.
Collaboration & Communication: Strong written and verbal skills—thrive in cross-functional environments with product, design, and engineering peers.
Nice to Have
Experience with real-time collaboration platforms, creative tools, or media-rich applications.
Familiarity with integrating generative AI or agent-based systems.
Previous experience at high-growth startups or in fast-paced, evolving settings.
Competitive coding, hackathon, or open-source contributions.
What We Offer
Competitive salary in the AI industry.
Equity in a rapidly growing startup shaping the future of AI and creativity.
Comprehensive health benefits, monthly stipends, and company retreats.
Supportive, collaborative office culture—we’re all building and launching together.
About Pika
At Pika, our mission is to make video creation seamless, intuitive, and accessible to everyone through the latest advances in AI. We believe everyone should be empowered to express creativity, and we foster a culture of product thinking, technical rigor, and collective impact. We're based in Palo Alto, CA, working in-office 3–5 days a week.
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Listed by Pika for a position based in the United States. Employers on this board attest they are hiring domestically.
Software Engineer, Product
Location
Palo Alto HQ
Employment Type
Full time
Location Type
On-site
Department
Engineering
Compensation
base salary $250K – $350K
Overview
Application
About the Role
We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Product to help shape and scale the user-facing systems at Pika. In this key role, you will bridge advanced engineering and product experience, taking ownership of the architecture and delivery of Pika’s product features—from intuitive user interfaces and collaboration tools to real-time interactions and generative AI-powered workflows.
As a Staff-level engineer, you will lead the design and implementation of robust, user-centric systems that enable millions of users to create and collaborate seamlessly with our AI-powered platform. Your high-impact architectural and product decisions will directly shape the end-user experience. You will also play a critical role in elevating the technical and product bar through architectural proposals, code reviews, technical mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration with product, design, and engineering teams.
What You'll Do
Lead User-Facing Product Engineering: Architect and develop intuitive, performant, and scalable user-facing features and applications for Pika’s web and multi-platform products.
Shape Product Experiences: Collaborate closely with product and design teams to deliver features that delight users and solve real problems, ensuring a seamless and accessible creative workflow.
Drive End-to-End Projects: Take ownership of product features from ideation and specification through development, launch, and ongoing improvement.
Architect Real-Time Collaboration: Build and scale systems that support real-time multi-user interactions, messaging, and live collaboration.
Integrate Advanced AI Workflows: Design and optimize product features that harness generative AI (LLMs, models, and agentic workflows) to power creative tools.
Champion Technical Excellence: Write and review technical proposals, evaluate technical and product trade-offs, and mentor other engineers to drive best practices and align on great product outcomes.
What We're Looking For
Experience: 5+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in senior, product-focused roles building web or mobile products at scale.
Product Mindset: Track record of delivering impactful user-facing features, balancing technical rigor with great product intuition.
Technical Mastery: Deep proficiency in modern frontend and/or backend technologies (React, TypeScript, Node.js, Go, or similar) and scalable architecture patterns.
Systems & Platform Knowledge: Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), and building reliable, high-traffic services.
User-Centric Focus: Passion for delivering polished, accessible, and responsive end-user experiences; comfortable collaborating with designers and product managers.
Ownership & Initiative: Proven ability to lead projects independently, identify product bottlenecks, and ship high-impact solutions with little direction.
Communication & Collaboration: Strong written and verbal communication; thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative, team-first environment.
Nice to Have
Experience with real-time collaboration, creative tools, or media-rich applications
Familiarity with generative AI and agentic product patterns
Experience at fast-growing startups or in ambiguous, high-velocity environments
Competitive coding, hackathon, or open-source experience
What We Offer
Competitive salary in the AI industry
Equity in a rapidly growing startup shaping the future of AI and creativity
Comprehensive health benefits, monthly stipends, and company retreats
A supportive, collaborative office culture—we’re all building and launching together
About Pika
At Pika, our mission is to make video creation seamless, intuitive, and accessible to everyone. We envision a world where everyone can express their creativity through video, empowered by the latest advances in AI. Our culture values sharp intellect, product thinking, efficient collaboration, and collective impact. We're based in Palo Alto, CA, working from the office 3-5 days a week.
Apply for this Job
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Listed by Pika for a position based in the United States. Employers on this board attest they are hiring domestically.
We are seeking Senior/Staff level Inference Engineers to accelerate the performance of Pika's AI-driven products. In this highly technical role, you will operate at the intersection of cutting-edge inference acceleration, GPU parallelism, advanced model deployment, and video generation technologies. Your expertise will drive significant improvements to model speed and efficiency, ensuring our creative AI systems deliver industry-leading user experiences at scale.
You will design and optimize inference pipelines, implement state-of-the-art acceleration techniques, and work closely with researchers and engineers across the team to push the boundaries of what’s possible in real-time AI deployment. Your efforts will play a foundational role in powering the next generation of Pika’s video and language models.
What You’ll Do
Accelerate Inference: Lead and implement advanced inference acceleration techniques, including attention optimization and quantization for efficient model serving.
Maximize GPU Parallelism: Engineer and optimize GPU strategies across tensor, sequence, and pipeline parallelism (TP, SP, PP) for maximal efficiency and scalability.
Programming for Performance: Develop and optimize high-performance computing kernels and distributed workloads using CUDA and NCCL.
Advance AI Deployment: Collaborate with research and engineering teams to bring state-of-the-art videogen and large language models into production.
Improve Training Efficiency: (Bonus) Contribute to improvements in model training speed, stability, and resource utilization as part of our deployment lifecycle.
Technical Excellence: Drive rigorous code reviews, participate in technical discussions, and mentor fellow engineers on best practices in inference and GPU programming.
What We’re Looking For
Experience: 5+ years engineering experience, with a strong track record in inference acceleration and model deployment at scale.
Inference Mastery: Proven expertise in inference optimization, including quantization, attention acceleration, and deep learning compiler stacks.
GPU & Parallelism: Deep knowledge of GPU programming (CUDA, NCCL) and experience with SP, TP, PP, and other forms of parallelism for distributed inference.
AI Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with video generation (videogen) models and large language models (LLMs).
Collaboration: Strong cross-discipline communication skills; able to drive shared goals across research and engineering functions.
Ownership Mindset: Self-driven, solutions-oriented, and capable of managing ambiguity in a fast-paced startup environment.
Bonus: Experience in enhancing training efficiency, stability, or resource optimization for large models.
Nice to Have
Experience with high-throughput video or real-time streaming model deployment
Familiarity with distributed training and optimization toolkits
Contributions to open source projects in AI infrastructure or deep learning compilers
Startup or rapid prototyping experience
What We Offer
Competitive salary in the AI industry
Equity in a fast-growing startup shaping the future of AI
Comprehensive health benefits, monthly stipends, company retreats
A supportive and collaborative office culture—we’re all building and launching together
About Pika
At Pika, we're crafting a future where video creation is seamless, intuitive, and universally accessible. Our mission is to empower creativity by breaking down technical barriers using the transformative power of AI. We’re a tight-knit, energetic team based in Palo Alto, CA, valuing efficiency, curiosity, and the ambition to make a meaningful impact on the world.
We work from our Palo Alto office 3–5 days a week and welcome applicants who are eager to contribute onsite.
Listed by Pika for a position based in the United States. Employers on this board attest they are hiring domestically.