---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Backend Platform at Harvey'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-backend-platform-harvey-san-francisco-7aph5xkaydca'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-09'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Backend Platform at Harvey

- **Company:** [Harvey](https://feeny.ai/companies/harvey)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/harvey/66a13783-3073-4474-8dad-90f4146885ef

## Job description

## Why Harvey

At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come. This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. We have strong product-market fit and world-class investor support. We’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched. Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you. At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.

## Role Overview

As a Backend Platform Engineer at Harvey, you will help build and operate the cohesive backend platform that all our services run on. You’ll design and implement shared frameworks and libraries that abstract common concerns, improve developer experience, and raise the baseline for reliability and performance across all teams.

Your mission aligns with our platform charter: create “a shared foundation that enables product teams to ship reliable, observable, and performant experiences quickly and safely.” By centralizing common work, you’ll let product engineers focus on shipping features rather than re-inventing the wheel. This is a high-impact role where the code you write and the systems you build will amplify the productivity and quality of engineering across the entire company.

If you’re excited about building foundational systems, solving cross-cutting technical challenges, and enabling others to move faster with confidence, we’d love to hear from you.

## What You'll Do

- Develop and maintain Harvey’s internal backend frameworks and libraries that provide common capabilities (API routing, service lifecycle management, caching and messaging primitives, error handling interfaces, etc.), so product teams don’t have to reinvent them
- Create and improve APIs, service templates, and versioned interfaces that establish consistent patterns for building new services and features
- Introduce and champion modern backend architecture patterns like asynchronous I/O (asyncio) and streaming data processing, continually evolving our platform for better performance and scalability
- Design Harvey-specific abstractions and domain-specific frameworks—covering cross-cutting concerns (e.g., authorization, streaming) and areas like data governance and event processing—to provide product engineers with these capabilities out of the box
- Embed reliability and observability into the platform by building in tracing, metrics, and automated tests (shift-left), ensuring services built on our foundation are robust and easy to monitor
- Collaborate with Model Infrastructure team to tackle challenges unique to GenAI-native applications — such as supporting high-throughput model inference, managing streaming and long-running API interactions, and designing abstractions for retrieval, context handling, and prompt lifecycle
- Collaborate with the Developer Experience and Infrastructure teams (who own CI/CD pipelines, build tools, and release infrastructure) to integrate our platform components seamlessly into the deployment and monitoring ecosystem
- Work closely with product engineering teams to gather feedback, evangelize best practices, and make the “paved road” approach a reality — providing strong defaults and clear documentation so teams can move fast with confidence

## What You Have

- 8+ years of software engineering experience (post-BS/MS), including building scalable backend systems or internal developer platforms
- Proficiency in Python (or similar languages) and deep knowledge of backend development fundamentals (APIs, data stores, concurrency, distributed systems)
- Hands-on experience with web frameworks and service architectures (e.g. Flask/FastAPI, Bounded context services, microservices) and an understanding of designing clean, versioned APIs
- Familiarity with caching, messaging, and database technologies (Redis, Kafka, SQL/NoSQL databases, Vector databases, etc.) and how to use them effectively for high performance and reliability
- A track record of writing high-quality, well-tested code and using tools (unit/integration testing, static typing, CI) to catch issues early and ensure reliability
- Strong problem-solving skills and a passion for improving developer experience — you enjoy creating tools or frameworks that make other engineers more productive
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work across teams and incorporate feedback.
- Experience contributing to or maintaining internal libraries/frameworks is a plus.

## Compensation Range

$231,000 - $340,000 USD

Depending on your location, an Applicant Privacy Notice may apply to you. You can find all of our Applicant Privacy Notices [[here](https://www.notion.so/harveyai/Harvey-Candidate-Privacy-Policies-319ac3fcdd7a803bb807d5094f249922)].

## #LI-AN2

Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@harvey.ai

## About Harvey

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Harvey builds domain-specific AI software for legal and professional services, enabling law firms and in-house teams to automate research, contract analysis, due diligence, and complex workflows.
- **Entity Type**: Private (backed by leading venture capital firms)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Winston Weinberg (CEO), Gabriel Pereyra (President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI software for legal and professional services (LegalTech)
- **Target customers**: B2B – large law firms (AmLaw 100), in-house legal teams at Fortune 500 enterprises, mid-sized firms, and professional service networks across 60+ countries.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To enable legal and professional services teams to focus on high-value work by providing a secure, expert AI platform that handles research, drafting, and complex workflows.

## Products & Services
- **Harvey Assistant**: Ask questions, analyze documents, and draft faster with domain-specific AI (SaaS).
- **Harvey Vault**: Securely store, organize, and bulk-analyze legal documents (SaaS).
- **Harvey Knowledge**: Research complex legal, regulatory, and tax questions across domains (SaaS).
- **Harvey Agents**: Purpose-built agents that execute complex legal work end-to-end (SaaS).
- **Harvey Contract Intelligence**: Surface insights, strengthen negotiations, and accelerate reviews (SaaS).
- **Harvey Command Center**: Analytics, benchmarking, and agentic insights for leading AI transformation (SaaS).
- **Harvey Mobile**: Mobile access to stay productive from anywhere (SaaS).
- **Harvey Shared Spaces**: Collaborate with legal teams across organizations in secure shared workspaces (SaaS).
- **Harvey Ecosystem**: Integration with existing tools to ground answers in trusted sources (API/platform).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (company is private).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) – reported in press but exact figure not disclosed; strong growth implied by 1,500+ customers and rapid hiring.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, GV (Google Ventures), OpenAI Startup Fund, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, EQT.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Named Time100 Most Influential Companies (2025).
  - LinkedIn Top 50 Startup of 2025.
  - CNBC Disruptor 50 List.
  - 1,500+ customers across 60+ countries, including AmLaw 100 firms.
  - Headcount: ~300 employees (as of mid-2025), with aggressive hiring (254 active job postings).
  - Office expansion: San Francisco, New York City, London.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Domain specialization**: AI models trained specifically for legal and professional services, not generic LLMs.
- **Enterprise security**: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27701/42001, GDPR, CCPA compliance – meeting law firm security requirements.
- **Deep investor backing**: World-class VC network provides strategic guidance and access.
- **Strong product‑market fit**: Rapid adoption by top-tier law firms and in-house teams, with high switching costs due to embedded workflows.
- **First‑mover in agentic legal AI**: Purpose‑built agents execute end‑to‑end tasks, differentiating from simple document Q&A tools.

## Strategic Focus
- **Customization, collaboration, and simplicity**: Helping teams embed expertise into Harvey, collaborate across firms, and reduce complexity via agentic workflows.
- **Expansion beyond legal**: Long‑term ambition to transform professional services broadly (consulting, accounting, etc.).
- **Product innovation**: Continued investment in agentic AI, mobile access, and ecosystem integrations.
- **Global growth**: Scaling sales and engineering teams in existing hubs and expanding into new markets.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Fast‑paced, collaborative, ambitious. Values include **Decisiveness** (“take the square root of the weather” – avoid overanalysis), **Simplicity**, and **Job’s Not Finished** (continuous improvement).
- **Work environment**: Hybrid – 3+ days per week in office for roles based in San Francisco, New York City, or London. Some fully remote positions available (clearly marked).
- **Benefits**: Comprehensive health/dental/vision insurance, 401(k) match, paid parental leave (immediately eligible), annual professional development stipend, in‑office daily lunch, and more.
- **Growth opportunities**: Rapidly scaling (~300 employees, 254 open roles) provides internal mobility and ownership of impactful projects.
- **Engineering culture**: Strong blend of AI research (DeepMind background) and legal domain expertise. CTO Siva Gurumurthy recently joined. Emphasis on building secure, enterprise‑grade products.

## Sources
1. [harvey.ai](https://www.harvey.ai/)
2. [harvey.ai/company](https://www.harvey.ai/company)
3. [harvey.ai/blog/landing-a-job-at-harvey](https://www.harvey.ai/blog/landing-a-job-at-harvey)
4. [linkedin.com/company/harvey-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvey-ai)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/harvey](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/harvey)

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