---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Backend at Gradial'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-backend-gradial-seattle-yphmnebkzqcx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Backend at Gradial

- **Company:** Gradial
- **Location:** Seattle, WA
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gradial/jobs/4438080009

## Job description

Gradial is building the AI-native system of work for enterprise marketing. Our agents turn ideas into live campaigns by executing across the tools, teams, and workflows enterprises already use—from content authoring and campaign assembly to quality assurance and brand compliance. We give marketers and creatives more time to shape brands, understand customers, and create work that moves people.

We’re tackling some of the hardest problems in applied AI: building agent harnesses, sandboxed execution environments, and orchestration that enable agents to plan, act, and verify their work reliably at enterprise scale. We’re growing rapidly, winning Fortune 500 and enterprise customers including AWS, T-Mobile, and Prudential. Our $65 million Series C led by Insight Partners is accelerating that momentum.

Join us to help define how people and AI agents work together. We move with urgency, reason from first principles, and take ownership from idea to customer impact. You’ll shape the product, own consequential problems, and build systems that some of the world’s leading brands depend on every day.

## The Role

Gradial is looking for a Staff Software Engineer, Backend to take on some of the largest, most complex and ambiguous technical problems across our product. You’ll own critical systems from loosely defined problem through architecture and production, building the backend foundations that enable Gradial to deliver increasingly powerful AI-driven workflows.

This is a highly hands-on IC role. You’ll write production code, make consequential architectural decisions and create clarity where the path forward is not obvious. You’ll work closely with engineering, product and design to turn ambitious ideas into reliable systems while raising the technical bar across the engineering team.

## What You’ll Own

- Lead large, complex technical projects from ambiguous problem definition through architecture, implementation and production
- Architect and build backend systems that power AI-driven workflows, including real-time inference, tool orchestration and long-running processes
- Drive technical direction for critical systems with a focus on scalability, reliability, performance and long-term maintainability
- Turn loosely defined product and technical problems into clear plans, making pragmatic decisions and driving execution without requiring a predefined path
- Build new systems from 0→1 while evolving existing architecture as our product, customers and engineering organization scale
- Establish patterns and abstractions that simplify complex systems and make the broader engineering team more effective
- Partner closely with product and design to shape solutions, identify technical opportunities and make thoughtful tradeoffs
- Raise the engineering bar through technical leadership, architecture, code reviews and mentorship while remaining deeply involved in implementation
- Own systems end to end, including testing, deployment, observability, reliability and ongoing operation in production

## What We Need

- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with significant experience building and operating backend systems
- Proven ability to independently lead large, technically complex projects in fast-moving or ambiguous environments
- Deep technical expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, algorithms and system design
- Track record of taking products or systems from 0→1 and making sound architectural decisions with incomplete information
- Ability to break down vague, high-variance problems into clear technical approaches and drive them through execution
- Strong product judgment and the ability to balance technical quality, speed and customer impact
- Experience designing systems for scalability, reliability, performance and maintainability in production
- Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical decisions and align engineers and cross-functional partners
- High ownership mindset with a willingness to work across boundaries and own both the problem and the solution

## Nice to Have

- Experience building products or infrastructure involving AI/ML systems, LLMs or agentic workflows
- Experience in high-growth or early-stage startups where technical scope and priorities change quickly
- Proficiency with TypeScript or similar languages

The salary range for this position is $200,000 – $240,000 annually. Final compensation will be determined based on factors such as experience, skills, and qualifications.

## What we offer

- Performance-based annual bonus
- Meaningful equity awards
- Medical, dental & vision (fully covered for employees with 75% for dependents)
- Fertility & family-planning support
- 401k plan
- Unlimited PTO
- A beautiful Seattle office with a gym, sauna, and bike parking
- Free lunch three days a week in our HQ
- A front-row seat to building category-defining AI infrastructure

You'll thrive here if you

- Learn quickly, actively seek out new challenges, and regularly reconsider “how it’s always been done.”
- Want to have real impact with zero bureaucracy.
- Have an innate drive for being 1% better than the day before, building towards greatness.
- Embrace AI as a core tool for problem-solving, innovation, and scale.
- Show customer-obsession (internal or external), high ownership/accountability, and bias for action.
- Communicate clearly, directly, with curiosity, and assuming good intentions.
- Thrive in fast-paced, hyper-growth environments where building better > maintaining status quo.

AI Literacy & Interviewing Tools

As an AI-first company, we prioritize AI literacy as a core competency in our hiring decisions. We’re excited by candidates who thoughtfully apply AI tools in their work, but during interviews we’re focused on you. This is your opportunity to show how you think, communicate, and solve problems. Over-reliance on AI-generated responses during the interview process (especially when it obscures your own voice) will result in disqualification. We want to understand your unique perspective and how you approach challenges, both with and without AI.

Gradial is dedicated to creating an environment where diverse perspectives are valued and all team members can grow. We offer competitive compensation, equity, flexible work hours, comprehensive benefits, and a collaborative culture focused on learning and impact.

## About Gradial

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Gradial provides an agentic marketing operations platform that automates campaign execution, content assembly, and brand governance for large enterprises.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C, last funding $65M)
- **Headquarters**: Seattle, Washington, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Enterprise marketing technology (MarTech)
- **Target customers**: Large enterprises (B2B, B2C) – examples include T-Mobile, AWS, Prudential, Avalara
- **Mission/purpose**: “Enable marketing at the speed of thought” – turning fragmented marketing execution into a governed operating system so enterprise teams can move from strategy to live work with speed, visibility, and control.

## Products & Services
- **Gradial Platform**: An agentic operating system for marketing operations. Agents handle authoring, QA, tagging, assembly, and execution of campaigns (landing pages, PDPs, emails, etc.). Includes built-in brand compliance, accessibility checks, and governance. Supports personalization at scale and optimization.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Latest funding round – $65M Series C (raised in 2026). Prior total funding reported as $53.4M (likely including earlier rounds).
- **Notable Investors**: Madrona Venture Group, PruVen Capital, VMG Partners, Insight Partners, General Advance, and six others.
- **Growth Signals**: Strong enterprise customer logos (T-Mobile, AWS, Prudential, Avalara); 24 open job postings across Engineering, Product, Revenue, and Delivery teams; named a leader in a competitive landscape including Braze, Zeta Global, and Jasper.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Agentic execution layer** that automates high-volume, high-risk marketing work without requiring a full stack rebuild.
- **Governance-first design** – brand compliance and accessibility checks run automatically on every execution.
- **Trusted by top-tier enterprises** – AWS uses it as a “control tower”; T-Mobile modernized campaign launches; Prudential enables personalization at scale.
- **Speed and scalability** – teams increase throughput without adding headcount.

## Strategic Focus
- Scale adoption among large enterprises by deepening integrations and expanding agent capabilities for performance marketing, content updates, and asset management.
- Continue building the “system of work” that makes marketing execution faster, cleaner, and more governable.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture values**: Pragmatic AI, care for craft (quality and intentionality), end-to-end ownership, clarity under pressure, execution first, and systems that compound.
- **Work model**: Hybrid (Seattle office at 2505 2nd Avenue) and remote roles available across the US. Many engineering roles are Seattle-based; some Forward Deployed and Sales roles are remote.
- **Engineering culture**: Building “frontier systems for enterprise execution” – emphasis on product craft, applied AI, and solving complex workflow problems at scale.
- **Team structure**: Small-but-growing company – 24 open roles span Applied AI, Platform, Infrastructure, Forward Deployed, and Product Design. Opportunity for high ownership and impact.
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but the focus on “clarity under pressure” and “compounding systems” suggests a structured, high-autonomy environment.

## Sources
1. [Gradial Website](https://www.gradial.com/)
2. [Gradial About Page](https://www.gradial.com/about)
3. [CBInsights Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/gradial)
4. [Gradial Greenhouse Job Board](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gradial/jobs/4260900009)

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