
Member of Technical Staff, Backend at Profound (New York, NY)
Profound· New York, NY· $140k–$260k·
Role details
Equity · Competitive Base Salary · Benefits And Perks
Profound at a glance
Full-stack marketing platform for the AI era that measures and improves how brands appear across AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Profound tracks how AI answer engines mention, rank, cite, and describe a brand, capturing responses directly from the consumer browser rather than model APIs. It then gives marketers demand data (Prompt Volumes), crawler and AI-referral analytics (Agent Analytics), and autonomous agents to create and optimize content, so teams can diagnose and fix an AI visibility gap in one platform.
$155M+ raised · latest: Series C · $96M · February 2026 · $1B valuation · backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures
Summary
Build and optimize scalable backend infrastructure and APIs to power AI-driven analytics. Responsibilities include processing large datasets, ensuring system security and performance, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact features.
Job description
Profound is the fastest-growing AI marketing platform, used by 15% of the Fortune 500 including Comcast, Estée Lauder, and Walmart, and innovators like Ramp, MongoDB, and Figma. It is where marketing teams do the work: research, briefs, content, campaigns, reporting, all in one place, alongside agents that carry the load with them. Built on 2B+ real user prompts and growing, Profound’s data shows you what people ask AI and what the models say back. Profound's AI Marketer joins that data with deep context about our customers to find the opportunities worth acting on, and then puts agents to work: automating reporting, drafting content, auditing pages for readability, running competitive research. It measures what works and gets better every day. As a Backend Engineer, you will build and optimize the infrastructure that powers our AI-driven insights. You will design scalable APIs, process large datasets efficiently, and ensure high-performance systems that help businesses take control of their AI presence.
What you’ll do
- Architect and develop high-performance backend systems that support AI-driven analytics
- Build and maintain scalable APIs to power real-time insights and data retrieval
- Optimize data processing pipelines to handle large-scale structured and unstructured data
- Ensure system security, performance, and reliability at every level of the stack
- Work closely with front-end engineers and data scientists to deliver seamless, high-impact features
- Own key technical decisions, balancing speed with long-term maintainability
Who you are
- 4+ years of experience
- A strong portfolio or GitHub showcasing backend development expertise
- Proficient in Node.js, Python, or Rust, with experience in scalable backend architecture
- Deep understanding of databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, or OLAP databases, and query optimization
- Experience designing efficient data pipelines and working with distributed systems
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure such as AWS, GCP, or Azure and containerization including Docker and Kubernetes
- Strong grasp of security best practices, API authentication, and performance tuning
- Comfortable in a fast-moving, high-performance startup environment
Location This is an on-site role in our NYC, SF or Buenos Aires office, designed for builders who thrive on speed, iteration, and meaningful impact. We are happy to support visa sponsorship for qualified international candidates. For this role, the expected base salary range is $175,000 to $265,000 (NYC and SF). Comp may vary based on location. Profound’s total compensation package is designed to be competitive and includes base salary, equity, and a full range of benefits and perks. Final compensation will depend on factors such as your skills, experience, qualifications, and location, and will be determined during the interview process. Our recruiting team will share more details about the full compensation package and benefits as you move through hiring.
#LI-DNI
Note: All official communication from Profound will come from a @tryprofound.com email address. If you're contacted by anyone using a different domain, please disregard and report it as spam.
Why work at Profound
- Compensation: Strong base salary plus significant equity in a well-funded unicorn.
- Culture: High-context, direct communication with a bias for action; “merit-driven, not tenure-driven” career acceleration.
- Work model: In-office presence required in NYC, SF, London, or Buenos Aires; daily catered meals, late-night Uber reimbursement, fitness stipend, and flexible time off.
- Engineering focus: Key roles include Agent Engineer, AI/ML Engineer, Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer – competing for AI talent against companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
- Growth: Rapid scaling environment with visible impact; opportunity to define a new category.