About Shelf

Shelf builds software that helps enterprises make AI work in the real world. We care about the hard part: reliable systems, clear operational logic, and production-grade engineering that makes AI useful instead of brittle.

Job Description:

This role is for a senior backend engineer who can own important systems, not just implement tickets.

You will take ambiguous problems, design the right backend approach, ship it, and keep it healthy in production. We want someone who is strong technically, communicates clearly, and has the judgment to make systems simpler, safer, and easier to evolve over time.

This is a product engineering role with real ownership from system design through production.

What You Will Own

• Design and ship backend services, APIs, data flows, and background processing for production systems.
• Turn vague requirements into concrete technical plans, trade-offs, and execution.
• Own services after launch: reliability, observability, performance, and incident follow-through.
• Make sound decisions around system boundaries, data models, interfaces, and scaling paths.
• Write clear technical specs, architecture notes, and diagrams when they help the team move faster.
• Work closely with product, frontend, and platform engineers to deliver end-to-end outcomes.
• Improve engineering leverage with AI tooling, automation, and internal workflows rather than using AI as a gimmick.
• Raise the quality bar through code review, design review, and pragmatic technical leadership.

What Strong Performance Looks Like

• You reliably move important backend work forward without waiting to be tightly managed.
• Your systems are easier to operate and easier to change because of your design decisions.
• You communicate trade-offs clearly and make the team around you more effective.
• You use AI tools well: to accelerate analysis, implementation, debugging, writing, and repetitive work, while keeping a high verification bar.

What We Are Looking For

• Strong senior-level backend engineering experience in production systems.
• Strong Python skills and the ability to design clean, maintainable backend code.
• Good distributed systems judgment: concurrency, failure handling, data consistency, async work, and service boundaries.
• Hands-on cloud experience in AWS, Azure, or a similar environment.
• Comfort with SQL and NoSQL systems, schema design, and performance tuning.
• Ability to go from problem statement to design to production rollout with real ownership.
• Clear written and verbal communication. You can explain systems, trade-offs, and incidents without hiding behind jargon.
• AI-native working style. You already use AI tools in your daily engineering workflow and want to keep pushing that further.

Strong Plus

• Experience with LLM-backed systems, search, retrieval, AI infrastructure, or data-heavy pipelines.
• Working knowledge of TypeScript or the ability to contribute across the stack when needed.
• Experience shaping technical direction for other engineers, even without formal management responsibility.

How We Evaluate Fit

We care more about ownership, systems judgment, and learning velocity than a perfect keyword match to our stack. If you are the kind of engineer who can take a messy problem and turn it into a strong production system, we want to talk.

What Shelf Offers:

• B2B contract.
• Company Stock Options.
• Hardware: MacBook Pro.
• Modern technical stack. Develop open-source software.
• GitHub Copilot subscription.
• Access to Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, TypingMind, and MCP Servers.

Why Shelf:

• Our Leadership Team has deep knowledge management and AI domain expertise and enterprise SaaS background to execute this plan
• We love our customers and our customers love us. Ask a Shelf customer why, and they’ll tell you it’s because of our innovative capabilities, rock-solid reliability, they truly enjoy working with our people, but most of all – it’s the improvements they see in their business KPIs.
• We have raised over $60 million in funding and our investors include Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Connecticut Innovations, and others
• We have high velocity growth powered by the most innovative product in our category, 3X growth for 3 years in a row
• We now have over 100 employees in multiple U.S. states and European countries, and we have ambitious hiring goals over the next few months

Our Values:

Quality - We’re united by our focus on world‑class Quality. Quality in all things – starting with everything that leaves your desk. Everything you touch – every email, report, campaign, and piece of code – should be outstanding. Your work product should blow people away. Having people look at what you’ve done and say, “Wow.” That’s the standard here. Remember that how you do anything is how you do everything. Focus on craftsmanship—your ability to make things better.

Momentum - for us means that you should know that the things you’re responsible for are moving forward. When you look around and see something that’s stalled, get it moving again. We pride ourselves on “ball movement.” When your boss or team leaves you with something, they should return to see measurable progress. Small, continuous movement is our recipe for success. Constantly look for how to make the work around you move forward. We want you to initiate solutions, ideas, and progress. Don’t wait for it to come to you—reach out and create movement. All the time.

Accountability - We expect every team member to feel that they are accountable for more than anyone might normally expect. Each of us should feel real responsibility for things even at the edge of our control. We consistently share and align on expectations, give each other open and respectful feedback, and use those two drivers to ensure that every agreement we make with one another is clear and complete.

Hard Work - We’re here to do something difficult together. We care intensely about the mission and we expect that from our teammates. That care means that we work hard here. Hard work comes with long hours, extra effort…and real opportunity at Shelf. Your passion for creating and sustaining output is a part of our DNA. Support each other, cheer each other on, drive the mission forward. Great teams sustain intense effort together to win.

Learning Agility - We’re innovating in one of the fastest‑moving spaces in history at a time of accelerating global change. That’s incredibly exciting and requires each of us to commit fully to learning each and every day so that we can be the best at what we do. None of us know everything. All of us can learn anything. Staying open and constantly curious is a key success driver at Shelf. It also requires humility. We prize people who are consistently humble and open to making mistakes and growing from them. Recognize also that learning itself is a skill…we need you to be really good at it. Keep dialing in your own understanding about how you learn best and push yourself to keep growing.

Adapt and Thrive - Overcoming challenges lives deep in our DNA. We have a proud history of understanding and living the reality that obstacles are our opportunities…they’re the key to our success. Change is a constant in our business and fighting change is counterproductive. We need you to be good at being uncomfortable and understand that discomfort is the key to growth. Cultivate your own ability to adapt and know that struggling well is something you’ll share with every team you’re on at Shelf. Our company stories are about thriving through real difficulty…together.

Win Together - We win or lose as a team. Always. Everything you do here is connected to the rest of the organization. Part of our shared team environment demands full honesty…real candor and directness with one another. We expect you to constantly be thinking about how to support your teammates and the company, always acting in service to our shared mission and what’s best for the organization as a whole.