Software Engineer - Backend Systems
Luma AI
Software Engineering
Palo Alto, CA, USA
USD 170k-360k / year
Posted on Dec 20, 2025
Software Engineer - Backend Systems
Palo Alto, CA
Backend Platforms
Hybrid
Full-time
About Luma AI
Luma's mission is to build multimodal AI to expand human imagination and capabilities. We believe that multimodality is critical for intelligence. To go beyond language models and build more aware, capable, and useful systems, the next step function change will come from vision. So, we are working on training and scaling up multimodal foundation models for systems that can see and understand, show and explain, and eventually interact with our world to effect change.
Where You Come In
We are looking for versatile and product-minded Backend Engineers to build the Product Engine that powers Luma’s generative AI. You will bridge the gap between our Foundational Models and our users, architecting the robust application layer that makes our intelligence accessible, reliable, and magical.
This is a product engineering role focused on core infrastructure, APIs and user experience, not a data engineering role focused on offline batch processing or training pipelines.
The ideal candidate is a proactive, adaptable builder who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment and demonstrates strong product instincts.
What You'll Do
- Architect the "Product Engine": Design and build low-latency distributed systems and high-traffic client-facing APIs that wrap our foundational models in a reliable product experience.
- Scale the Agent Stack: Take ownership of our AI agent infrastructure, building the persistent state and execution layers required for autonomous agentic workflows.
- Serve Intelligence Real-Time: Work with our applied research and model inference teams to expose SOTA model capabilities optimizing for latency (p99) and availability to ensure instant, magical feedback for users.
- Own Critical Business Systems: Build and scale the "nervous system" of Luma, managing the core business logic, including authentication, transactional billing, and real-time user state management.
- Collaborate for User Delight: Partner closely with product, design, and research teams to translate user needs into elegant backend solutions, ensuring the "feel" of the product is fast and responsive.
Who You Are
- A Product Systems Engineer: You care as much about the User Experience (latency, polish, reliability) as you do about the code.
- Experienced Builder: You have 8+ years of experience with a proven record of shipping impactful, user-focused products.
- Polyglot & Proficient: You have strong proficiency in a backend language like Python or Go, with a willingness to learn across the stack.
- Infrastructure-Aware: You don't just deploy containers; you understand production orchestration and how to debug a crashing service in Kubernetes.
- Security Minded: You possess a strong understanding of security, authentication, and best practices for designing public-facing APIs.
- Adaptable: You are a generalist who enjoys hopping from one challenge to the next and thrives in the face of ambiguity.
What Sets You Apart (Bonus Points)
- AI Agentic Systems: Experience building or deploying agentic systems, co-pilot style features, or other complex LLM-powered workflows.
- Media-Heavy Applications: A background building backend systems for creative tools or media-rich apps (video, images, audio).
- Full Stack Familiarity: Exposure to or experience with frontend development (TypeScript, React) enabling you to empathize with client-side challenges.
Compensation
The base pay range for this role is $170,000 – $360,000 per year.
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How did you discover us?
Req ID: R100021