Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to join our Core AI Platform team. In this role, you will design and lead the development of a modular, scalable backend that orchestrates intelligent systems using LLMs, memory, and tool use. Your work will power real-time, high-trust, multi-agent solutions for financial institutions.

What You'll Do

Design and lead the architecture of a distributed, multi-agent AI framework integrating LLMs, decision layers, memory, and tooling.
Build real-time, low-latency inference systems capable of meeting the SLAs of transactional and regulated environments.
Develop modular backend components for agent planning, fallback handling, reward routing, and continuous reasoning.
Create developer-facing APIs and tools enabling safe, composable extensions of AI capabilities.
Integrate vector databases, custom retrieval mechanisms, evaluators, and auto-tuning pipelines into live systems.
Work closely with AI researchers to productionize experimental models, RL strategies, and alignment techniques.
Establish architectural best practices for scalable, fault-tolerant, and policy-aligned AI-driven systems.
Lead technical direction and influence cross-functional engineering strategy.

What We're Looking For

8+ years in backend/platform engineering.
2+ years building or deploying ML/AI systems in production.
Strong experience with Node.js and asynchronous, event-driven architecture.
Expertise in large language model (LLM) systems, reinforcement learning (RL), and agent architecture design.
Proven record building distributed systems and high-throughput infrastructure with real-time inference capabilities.
Prior hands-on ML experience—model training, pipeline design, or production debugging.
Proficient in modular software design with observability, testing, and resiliency in mind.

Nice to Have

Experience with vector databases, prompt engineering, semantic search, or orchestration engines.
Open-source contributions in the LLM/AI infrastructure space.

Technical Stack

Node.js

Team & Environment

You will join a dynamic team culture combining AI research, product design, and engineering excellence.

Benefits & Compensation

Remote-first work model with flexibility across time zones.
Comprehensive health insurance.
Career growth in one of the fastest-growing AI/FinTech environments.
Opportunity to lead in an emerging field at the intersection of AI, banking, and compliance.
Dynamic team culture combining AI research, product design, and engineering excellence.