About A1
A1 is a self-funded, independent AI group, focused on building a new consumer AI application with global impact. We’re assembling a small, elite team of ML, engineering and product builders who want to work on meaningful, high-impact problems.
This is a founding backend role. You will design and build the systems that orchestrate models, manage prompts and evaluation, and power every AI interaction users experience - under real-world constraints like latency, cost, failures, and scale.
Why This Role Matters
You power every AI interaction users experience
You shape how models are orchestrated, evaluated, and improved
You directly affect cost, latency, and reliability
You build real production AI infrastructure
What You’ll Be Doing
Design and implement backend services for AI-powered apps
Integrate LLMs, vision, speech, and other models
Build orchestration pipelines (agents, tools, workflows)
Implement prompt management and versioning
Build evaluation, logging, and feedback systems
Design scalable APIs for mobile and web clients
Handle retries, caching, rate limits, and fallbacks
Ensure security, privacy, and cost control
What You'll Need
4+ years backend engineering experience
Hands-on AI model integration experience
Strong proficiency in Python, Node.js, or Go
Experience designing REST/gRPC APIs
Understanding of AI latency and cost tradeoffs
Nice to Have
Built AI systems used in production
Experience with RAG, vector DBs, or agent frameworks
Designed evaluation or monitoring systems
Our Team \& Culture
We operate as a dense, senior, high-performance team. We value clarity, speed, craftsmanship, and relentless ownership. We behave like founders — we build, ship, iterate, and hold ourselves to a high technical bar.
If you value excellence, enjoy building real systems, and want to be part of a small team creating something globally impactful, you’ll thrive here.