Staff Engineer, Backend Systems

About the role

Lightfield is an AI-native CRM that integrates seamlessly with email, calendar, and meeting data. It organizes interactions into structured contexts such as accounts, tasks, follow-ups, and insights, ensuring no interactions are missed. Founded by experts who previously led successful AI products like Tome and worked on platforms like Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Salesforce, Lightfield is backed by leading venture capital firms. The company is rapidly growing, attracting hundreds of new businesses weekly, and is expanding its capabilities with new AI-driven features and a more flexible data model.

What you'll do

• Lead the architecture and execution of critical backend work streams including the API platform, core data model, and systems supporting new product features.
• Scale the API platform by implementing multi-tenant isolation, versioning, rate limits, quotas, idempotency, and monitoring latency and throughput.
• Collaborate with co-founders and product leadership to translate product visions into backend architectural decisions.
• Develop and ship capabilities requiring safe sandboxed code execution, including isolation, resource limits, auditability, and security guardrails.
• Design and implement customer-defined CRM schemas, including custom fields, objects, and flexible relationships, while maintaining query performance and clean APIs.
• Manage complex projects end-to-end, from data model to query patterns to API usability.
• Ensure the abstractions used by the broader engineering team are robust and maintainable.
• Contribute to hiring efforts as the team grows, helping identify and close strong technical talent.

Who you are

• At least 8 years of experience building and scaling backend systems, with significant time in technical leadership roles.
• Experience owning the architecture of significant product-facing systems, including backend systems that drive customer experiences.
• Proven ability to lead large, ambiguous projects end-to-end, from defining the approach to sequencing work and driving execution.
• Strong background with relational databases, particularly Postgres, with expertise in query optimization, indexing, and scaling.
• Significant experience designing and shipping APIs or platform-level systems, including versioning, authentication, rate limits, and backward compatibility.
• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS at scale, understanding issues related to isolation, data growth, and performance trade-offs.
• Product-minded, prioritizing customer impact over technical details.
• Willingness to engage deeply in design and code reviews, making others better through your technical judgment.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, early-stage environment with significant autonomy.

Why this role

This role offers the opportunity to shape the product, not just the infrastructure. Lightfield's product ambitions are outpacing the current team's capacity to design and execute the necessary backend systems. As the team scales, this role will play a crucial part in defining and delivering the technology that powers the product.