Senior Software Engineer | Phaidra | Remote (United States)
Posted 2025-09-08
Remote, USA
Full Time
Immediate Start
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">About Phaidra</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they’ve operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:</p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16961" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">DeepMind’s AlphaGo</a>, to reducing the energy required to cool <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/17/140987/google-just-gave-control-over-data-center-cooling-to-an-ai/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Google’s Data Centers</a> by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra is based in the USA but 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, <a href="https://www.oysterhr.com/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">OysterHR</a>. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Singapore, and India.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">**Please only apply to one opening. If you are a better fit for another opening, our team will move your application. Candidates who apply to multiple openings will not be considered.**</strong></p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Who You Are</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We are looking for a driven Software Engineer (Backend) to lay the technical foundation of our Control Plane team, to establish services, APIs, contracts and processes to control our customer serving core systems.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">You are bold and creative, and have deep empathy for customers and users. You will design and implement significant parts of the code base and will have the opportunity to make an immediate impact with your work and guide the product and team as we grow.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">You are curious and like to understand technologies and their tradeoffs in depth – providing technical guidance to the team and peers as and when required. Leading by example, you have accumulated a wealth of insights and experiences from your hands-on involvement in the field, and you are committed to rolling up your sleeves and getting work done. You like joining and supporting other engineers in their work to learn from them as well as letting them benefit from your expertise and experience.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">You have the motivation and skills to identify technical product needs, initiate projects and owning their delivery, including the involvement of engineering peers as needed. You are comfortable with challenging the status quo respectfully to drive and deliver technical excellence in the team.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">*We are seeking a team member located within one of the following areas: USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Italy, or Portugal.</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><strong class=" font-semibold">In the United States, we accept applicants located in the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington.</strong></span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><strong class=" font-semibold">In Canada, we accept applicants located in the following provinces: Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta.</strong></span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">UK-based candidates may have personal data shared with UK Visas & Immigration.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Responsibilities</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">The Control Plane team you are kicking off will be responsible for providing services, APIs and processes to orchestrate our core customer serving products. You will take ownership, work hands-on and provide technical guidance to the team and relevant stakeholders on the design, implementation and technical planning of the control plane. You will shape this new team and its deliverables from the very beginning as an experienced engineer with a focus on backend solutions.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">As an organization, we strongly believe in expertise across the stack. As such, you will have opportunities to contribute on a broad range of topics including Distributed Systems, MLOps and DevOps.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">In particular, you will:</p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Design, build and lead the engineering initiatives and technical vision for a new Control Plane team to ensure excellence on usability, orchestration, integration and operations on services allowing internal users and other services to trigger changes and actions on our data processing and AI workloads serving customers in production.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Contribute to the design and implementation of the product backend by writing REST & gRPC API services and scalable event-driven backend applications.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Design clear, extensible software interfaces for the team’s customers and maintain a high release quality bar.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Perform DevOps duties of CI/CD, Release & Deployment management.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Be a part of our global production oncall team and, own & operate your services in production, meeting Phaidra’s high bar for operational excellence.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Lead cross-functional initiatives collaborating with engineers, product managers and TPM across teams.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Mentor your peers and be a technical role-model in the team.</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">Onboarding</h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">In your first 30 days…</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra and our product.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will spend time in the Engineering org, learning how the teams operate, interact, and approach problems.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will read various parts of our handbook and familiarize yourself with the documentation culture at Phaidra.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will set up your development environment and start working on an onboarding exercise that will introduce you to various parts of our code base.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will learn about how we use agile and be able to navigate our sprint boards and backlogs.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will learn about various team standards and development & release processes.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will start to learn about our system architecture and infrastructure.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will start picking up few good “first-tasks” to get yourself accustomed to the end to end release flow.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">In your first 60 days…</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will get a solid understanding of what Phaidra does and how we do it.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will meet with team members across Phaidra and started building relationships that will help you be successful at your job.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will complete the onboarding exercise and will be on your way to completing your first production task.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will take ownership for the Control Plane work within an existing team, identify gaps and propose roadmap items on the topic.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">In your first 90 days…</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will be fully integrated in the team and with team members across the company.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will have a more in-depth understanding of our system architecture and infrastructure.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will complete your first on-call experience helping monitor and improve our production environments.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will become an expert with our tooling.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will start to contribute to knowledge sharing throughout Phaidra and the team.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will take proactively drive control plane topics and represent it technically throughout the company, as well as informing the formation of a dedicated team around the topic.</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">Key Qualifications</h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">6+ years of work experience.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong experience on designing and implementing services, APIs and backend solutions</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Expertise with production Software Engineering – relational and non-relational data modeling, micro-services, understanding of event driven systems, etc.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong experience building large scale multi-tenant systems with high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and statistics/metrics collection.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong expertise in Python and Cloud environments</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Ability to collaborate and communicate effectively in an all-remote setting</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Doing your work with curiosity, ownership, transparency & directness, outcome orientation, and customer empathy.</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Bonus</strong></h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience on building a control plane on top of a realtime production system</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with building applications that can be deployed in cloud, hybrid or on prem environments</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with or exposure to Machine Learning systems</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with leading formation of a new team and owned services from a technical perspective</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">Relevant Technologies from our Stack</h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Python, Go</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">PyTorch, PyTorch Lightning</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><a href="http://ray.io/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ray.io</a>, <a href="https://www.prefect.io/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Prefect</a>, <a href="https://mlflow.org/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">mlflow</a></span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">REST & gRPC micro-services</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform & <a href="https://kapitan.dev/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Kapitan</a></span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">GCP – GKE, PubSub, CloudSQL, BigTable, etc.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Postgres, MongoDB, Parquet, etc.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><a href="https://grafana.com/products/cloud/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Grafana Cloud</a>, Prometheus</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Poetry, Pants</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">General Interview Process</h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.</p>
<ol>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Meeting with Operations (30 minutes): The purpose of this interview is to meet you, learn more about your background, discuss what you are looking for in a new position and cover formalities around your application.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Hiring Manager interview (30 minutes): This is an introduction call with the hiring manager so that the candidate and the hiring manager can get to know each other better. It will mainly focus on your previous experience and technical background. This meeting is also meant to enable you to ask any questions about the team & role.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Technical Interview 1 (75 minutes): The purpose of this interview is to assess your skills in data structures, algorithms and problem solving. This interview will involve live coding exercises.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Technical Interview 2 (90 minutes): In this interview, we will go over a system design problem. You can expect to draw architecture diagrams using boxes & arrows in your browser. We will talk about system design, scalability and monitoring.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Tech Leadership and Product Management Interview (30 minutes): During this interview, we will discuss tech leadership skills and approaches, your experience in navigating uncertainty, as well as your experience on collaborating with product and project management as an engineer.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Culture fit interview with Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes): This interview focuses on alignment with Phaidra’s values and the mutual cultural fit.</span></li>
</ol>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Base Salary</strong></h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">US Residents:$114,400-$206,400/year</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">UK Residents: £93,600-£140,400/year</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Canada Residents: CA$140,000-CA$210,000/year</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Salary ranges for other countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Ireland) will vary based on the market rate for the location.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">This position will also include equity. These are best faith estimates of the base salary range for this position. Multiple factors such as experience, education, level, and location are taken into account when determining compensation.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Benefits & Perks</strong></h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Fast-paced and team-oriented environment where you will be instrumental in the direction of the company.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Phaidra is a 100% remote company with a digital nomad policy.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Competitive compensation & equity.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Outsized responsibilities & professional development.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 20 days off per year requirement.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Home office setup allowance, coworking space stipend, and company MacBook.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">*Please note that Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above do not apply to temporary employees such as interns.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">On being Remote</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We are thoughtful about remote collaboration. We look to the pioneers – like Gitlab – for inspiration and best practices to create a stellar remote work environment. We have a documentation-first culture and actively practice asynchronous communication in everything we do. Our team stays connected through tools like Slack and video chat. Most teams meet daily, and we have dedicated all-hands meetings weekly to build strong relationships. We hold virtual team building events once per quarter – and even hold virtual socials to watch rocket launches! We have had all-company summits in locations like Seattle, Athens, Goa, and Barcelona.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Equal Opportunity Employment</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at <a href="mailto:hiring@phaidra.ai" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer">hiring@phaidra.ai</a>.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">E-Verify Notice</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Additional information about E-Verify can be found <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E2bNjdEIG-f7tZ2Hg%5FzFXR2FjT4idYz-/view?usp=share%5Flink" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">here</a>.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><em>#LI-Remote</em></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.</strong></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they’ve operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:</p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16961" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">DeepMind’s AlphaGo</a>, to reducing the energy required to cool <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/17/140987/google-just-gave-control-over-data-center-cooling-to-an-ai/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Google’s Data Centers</a> by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra is based in the USA but 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, <a href="https://www.oysterhr.com/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">OysterHR</a>. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Singapore, and India.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">**Please only apply to one opening. If you are a better fit for another opening, our team will move your application. Candidates who apply to multiple openings will not be considered.**</strong></p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Who You Are</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We are looking for a driven Software Engineer (Backend) to lay the technical foundation of our Control Plane team, to establish services, APIs, contracts and processes to control our customer serving core systems.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">You are bold and creative, and have deep empathy for customers and users. You will design and implement significant parts of the code base and will have the opportunity to make an immediate impact with your work and guide the product and team as we grow.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">You are curious and like to understand technologies and their tradeoffs in depth – providing technical guidance to the team and peers as and when required. Leading by example, you have accumulated a wealth of insights and experiences from your hands-on involvement in the field, and you are committed to rolling up your sleeves and getting work done. You like joining and supporting other engineers in their work to learn from them as well as letting them benefit from your expertise and experience.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">You have the motivation and skills to identify technical product needs, initiate projects and owning their delivery, including the involvement of engineering peers as needed. You are comfortable with challenging the status quo respectfully to drive and deliver technical excellence in the team.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">*We are seeking a team member located within one of the following areas: USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Italy, or Portugal.</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><strong class=" font-semibold">In the United States, we accept applicants located in the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington.</strong></span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><strong class=" font-semibold">In Canada, we accept applicants located in the following provinces: Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta.</strong></span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">UK-based candidates may have personal data shared with UK Visas & Immigration.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Responsibilities</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">The Control Plane team you are kicking off will be responsible for providing services, APIs and processes to orchestrate our core customer serving products. You will take ownership, work hands-on and provide technical guidance to the team and relevant stakeholders on the design, implementation and technical planning of the control plane. You will shape this new team and its deliverables from the very beginning as an experienced engineer with a focus on backend solutions.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">As an organization, we strongly believe in expertise across the stack. As such, you will have opportunities to contribute on a broad range of topics including Distributed Systems, MLOps and DevOps.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">In particular, you will:</p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Design, build and lead the engineering initiatives and technical vision for a new Control Plane team to ensure excellence on usability, orchestration, integration and operations on services allowing internal users and other services to trigger changes and actions on our data processing and AI workloads serving customers in production.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Contribute to the design and implementation of the product backend by writing REST & gRPC API services and scalable event-driven backend applications.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Design clear, extensible software interfaces for the team’s customers and maintain a high release quality bar.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Perform DevOps duties of CI/CD, Release & Deployment management.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Be a part of our global production oncall team and, own & operate your services in production, meeting Phaidra’s high bar for operational excellence.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Lead cross-functional initiatives collaborating with engineers, product managers and TPM across teams.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Mentor your peers and be a technical role-model in the team.</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">Onboarding</h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">In your first 30 days…</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra and our product.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will spend time in the Engineering org, learning how the teams operate, interact, and approach problems.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will read various parts of our handbook and familiarize yourself with the documentation culture at Phaidra.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will set up your development environment and start working on an onboarding exercise that will introduce you to various parts of our code base.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will learn about how we use agile and be able to navigate our sprint boards and backlogs.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will learn about various team standards and development & release processes.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will start to learn about our system architecture and infrastructure.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will start picking up few good “first-tasks” to get yourself accustomed to the end to end release flow.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">In your first 60 days…</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will get a solid understanding of what Phaidra does and how we do it.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will meet with team members across Phaidra and started building relationships that will help you be successful at your job.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will complete the onboarding exercise and will be on your way to completing your first production task.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will take ownership for the Control Plane work within an existing team, identify gaps and propose roadmap items on the topic.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">In your first 90 days…</strong></p>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will be fully integrated in the team and with team members across the company.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will have a more in-depth understanding of our system architecture and infrastructure.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will complete your first on-call experience helping monitor and improve our production environments.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will become an expert with our tooling.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will start to contribute to knowledge sharing throughout Phaidra and the team.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">You will take proactively drive control plane topics and represent it technically throughout the company, as well as informing the formation of a dedicated team around the topic.</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">Key Qualifications</h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">6+ years of work experience.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong experience on designing and implementing services, APIs and backend solutions</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Expertise with production Software Engineering – relational and non-relational data modeling, micro-services, understanding of event driven systems, etc.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong experience building large scale multi-tenant systems with high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and statistics/metrics collection.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Strong expertise in Python and Cloud environments</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Ability to collaborate and communicate effectively in an all-remote setting</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Doing your work with curiosity, ownership, transparency & directness, outcome orientation, and customer empathy.</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Bonus</strong></h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience on building a control plane on top of a realtime production system</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with building applications that can be deployed in cloud, hybrid or on prem environments</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with or exposure to Machine Learning systems</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Experience with leading formation of a new team and owned services from a technical perspective</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">Relevant Technologies from our Stack</h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Python, Go</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">PyTorch, PyTorch Lightning</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><a href="http://ray.io/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ray.io</a>, <a href="https://www.prefect.io/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Prefect</a>, <a href="https://mlflow.org/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">mlflow</a></span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">REST & gRPC micro-services</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform & <a href="https://kapitan.dev/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Kapitan</a></span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">GCP – GKE, PubSub, CloudSQL, BigTable, etc.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Postgres, MongoDB, Parquet, etc.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200"><a href="https://grafana.com/products/cloud/" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Grafana Cloud</a>, Prometheus</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Poetry, Pants</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis</span></li>
</ul>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2">General Interview Process</h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.</p>
<ol>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Meeting with Operations (30 minutes): The purpose of this interview is to meet you, learn more about your background, discuss what you are looking for in a new position and cover formalities around your application.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Hiring Manager interview (30 minutes): This is an introduction call with the hiring manager so that the candidate and the hiring manager can get to know each other better. It will mainly focus on your previous experience and technical background. This meeting is also meant to enable you to ask any questions about the team & role.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Technical Interview 1 (75 minutes): The purpose of this interview is to assess your skills in data structures, algorithms and problem solving. This interview will involve live coding exercises.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Technical Interview 2 (90 minutes): In this interview, we will go over a system design problem. You can expect to draw architecture diagrams using boxes & arrows in your browser. We will talk about system design, scalability and monitoring.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Tech Leadership and Product Management Interview (30 minutes): During this interview, we will discuss tech leadership skills and approaches, your experience in navigating uncertainty, as well as your experience on collaborating with product and project management as an engineer.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Culture fit interview with Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes): This interview focuses on alignment with Phaidra’s values and the mutual cultural fit.</span></li>
</ol>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Base Salary</strong></h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">US Residents:$114,400-$206,400/year</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">UK Residents: £93,600-£140,400/year</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Canada Residents: CA$140,000-CA$210,000/year</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Salary ranges for other countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Ireland) will vary based on the market rate for the location.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">This position will also include equity. These are best faith estimates of the base salary range for this position. Multiple factors such as experience, education, level, and location are taken into account when determining compensation.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Benefits & Perks</strong></h3>
<ul class=" text-base sm:text-lg marker:text-color list-inside list-disc text-gray-500 list-disc list-outside pl-3 mb-6">
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Fast-paced and team-oriented environment where you will be instrumental in the direction of the company.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Phaidra is a 100% remote company with a digital nomad policy.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Competitive compensation & equity.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Outsized responsibilities & professional development.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 20 days off per year requirement.</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).</span></li>
<li class=" leading-snug mb-2 pl-2"><span class="text-gray-200">Home office setup allowance, coworking space stipend, and company MacBook.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">*Please note that Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above do not apply to temporary employees such as interns.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">On being Remote</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">We are thoughtful about remote collaboration. We look to the pioneers – like Gitlab – for inspiration and best practices to create a stellar remote work environment. We have a documentation-first culture and actively practice asynchronous communication in everything we do. Our team stays connected through tools like Slack and video chat. Most teams meet daily, and we have dedicated all-hands meetings weekly to build strong relationships. We hold virtual team building events once per quarter – and even hold virtual socials to watch rocket launches! We have had all-company summits in locations like Seattle, Athens, Goa, and Barcelona.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">Equal Opportunity Employment</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at <a href="mailto:hiring@phaidra.ai" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer">hiring@phaidra.ai</a>.</p>
<h3 class=" text-white font-semibold text-lg mb-2"><strong class=" font-semibold">E-Verify Notice</strong></h3>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3">Additional information about E-Verify can be found <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E2bNjdEIG-f7tZ2Hg%5FzFXR2FjT4idYz-/view?usp=share%5Flink" target="_blank" class="break-all font-medium underline hover:opacity-75" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">here</a>.</p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><em>#LI-Remote</em></p>
<p class=" text-gray-200 text-base sm:text-lg leading-relaxed mb-3"><strong class=" font-semibold">WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.</strong></p>