---
title: 'Senior Backend Engineer at raylu.ai'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-raylu-ai-new-york-m09zgthv8mv6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Senior Backend Engineer at raylu.ai

- **Company:** raylu.ai
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $165k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-10-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/raylu-ai/am9icG9zdDrC4RGb80OfbFJIG4Dv1Ra2

## Job description

Position Summary We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to be the scaling expert behind our core systems. You’ll drive architectural decisions that balance “what must work today” with “what must scale tomorrow,” owning systems that are low-latency, resilient, and cost-aware.

## What we’re looking for

- TS-first backend: Expert in Node/Typescript services; bonus points for production Go.
- Systems & scale: Deep grasp of memory management, distributed systems, durable execution, and edge functions.
- Queues & state: Hands-on with Temporal (or equivalent durable workflows) and Redis at scale.
- Cloud & reliability: Comfortable shipping/operating in modern cloud environments with strong observability habits.
- LLM-aware: Familiarity with LLM integrations and their operational quirks is a plus.
- Product sense: You make pragmatic tradeoffs, communicate risk clearly, and choose designs that unblock the roadmap.
- Opinionated: Deep level of understanding of the technological landscape, making both high level system and granular code design decisions based on understanding rather than preference - diving deep on unknown patterns in order to build the best product.

## Responsibilities

- Architect, build, and operate backend services that are fast, fault-tolerant, and easy to evolve.
- Define service boundaries, data models, and contracts that keep teams moving independently.
- Establish performance baselines and SLOs; design for durability and graceful degradation.
- Lead technical design reviews and mentor engineers across code quality, testing, and ops.
- Own critical systems: queue orchestration (Temporal), caching (Redis), and infra automation.

## Nice to have

- Prior work with agentic/LLM workflows

Logistics

- Compensation: $165K - $250K salary, $100K-200K equivalent in new hire equity (4 year vest)
- Location: New York City. We are a fully in-office team working out of Midtown Manhattan Monday through Friday. We allow for WFH days when anyone is traveling, but we do not allow for permanent remote work.
- Benefits:- Generous health, dental, and vision insurance
- 401k with 3% automatic contribution (no vesting)
- Paid Lunches
- Wellness and Citi Bike benefit

## About raylu.ai

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Raylu provides an AI-powered origination engine for private markets, enabling investment funds to discover, research, and engage with high-fit deal opportunities.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Ali Dastjerdi (CEO), Nathan Ondracek (CTO), Samuel Ilkka (COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Financial Technology (Fintech) / AI for Private Markets
- **Target Customers**: B2B — investment funds, private equity firms, venture capital firms, and other institutional investors managing private market assets.
- **Mission Statement**: "Make private markets move like public markets" by automating the hardest work in investing, starting with deal origination.

## Products & Services
- **Raylu Platform (AI Origination Engine)**: An AI-powered SaaS platform that translates an investment thesis into actionable market maps, target lists, live signals, and founder access. It summarizes, contextualizes, and connects insights across a firm’s research and CRM, enabling teams to move from strategy to deployed capital faster. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/)
- **Data Room Analysis**: Provides initial go/no-go decision support by analyzing data room information as soon as it becomes available.
- **Expert Network Call Takeaways**: Summarizes expert opinions and their implications on investment decisions.
- **Model Assumptions Check**: Validates investment model assumptions to identify which require further scrutiny.
- **Contracts, IP, and Regulatory Review**: Identifies potential legal risks early in the investment process.
- **Online Research Aggregation**: Aggregates comprehensive information about prospects from various online sources. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/raylu)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Funds using Raylu represent over **$500B+** in Assets Under Management (AUM). The platform is trusted by **over 50 funds**. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founders are Harvard graduates with experience at Insight Partners (Ali Dastjerdi) and Amazon Web Services (Nathan Ondracek, Samuel Ilkka). [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/company)
- **Growth Signals**: Launched during a turning point in AI with the release of GPT-3. The company is actively hiring for multiple senior engineering and go-to-market roles, indicating a scaling phase. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/company/careers)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Differentiation from Databases**: Unlike traditional databases that surface companies by tags (giving everyone the same list), Raylu reads what companies actually do across 300,000+ sources and builds every market map from scratch around a specific investment thesis. This surfaces high-fit targets that competitors wouldn't find.
- **Institutional Security**: SOC 2 Type I & II certified with annual third-party audits. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with strict access controls. The firm also maintains enterprise-grade zero-retention agreements with model providers. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/)
- **Deep Integrations**: Connects with platforms like DealCloud, Affinity, and Salesforce, as well as CIMs, pitch decks, spreadsheets, data rooms, and meeting notes.
- **MCP Integration**: Offers direct access to its sourcing, research, and market intelligence via an MCP (Model Context Protocol) inside AI assistants like Claude, making the platform a powerful backend for AI-driven workflows. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/)

## Strategic Focus
- **Automating Financial Workflows**: Continuously developing sophisticated LLM technology to streamline decisions for private markets worldwide.
- **End-to-End Origination**: Enabling funds to run the entire origination process (market mapping, company scoring, relationship building) within a single platform.
- **Single-Tenant Deployments**: Offering enhanced security and data isolation options for firms with additional security requirements. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/)
- **Headcount Growth**: Actively expanding its team in New York City, with a focus on senior engineering talent (AI, Data, Full Stack, Frontend) and strategic go-to-market roles (Strategic Accounts Director, Account Executive). [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/company/careers)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Mission**: The founders (Harvard grads with backgrounds in AI investing and AWS engineering) are building a team in Midtown Manhattan, the global center of finance. The mission is to fundamentally change how the world’s top investors operate.
- **Cutting-Edge Tech**: The company was launched at a "turning point in AI" with GPT-3 and focuses on building bespoke, sophisticated LLM technology. Engineers work on challenging problems in NLP, data aggregation, and search.
- **Work Environment**: Based in Midtown Manhattan. The company describes its headquarters as a hub for its talented team and a demonstration of its commitment to innovation.
- **Team Size**: Currently small (1-10 employees per Crunchbase), offering early-stage impact and ownership. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/raylu)

## Sources
1. [raylu.ai](https://raylu.ai/)
2. [raylu.ai/company](https://raylu.ai/company)
3. [raylu.ai/company/about](https://raylu.ai/company/about)
4. [raylu.ai/company/careers](https://raylu.ai/company/careers)
5. [crunchbase.com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/raylu)

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