Senior Software Engineer to $11000

Senior Software Engineer — Rank.ai

At Rank.ai, our goal is to help companies understand and optimize how they rank in AI (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini), not just in Google. As AI becomes the primary way people discover information, we’re building tools that give businesses visibility into their AI rankings and provide insights to improve through content creation and analytics.

We’re looking for an early-stage founding engineer to join as our core backend hire. This role is ideal for someone with 7+ years of professional software engineering experience who has built systems from the ground up and is eager to do it again in a fast-moving startup. You’ll be working directly with the founders to define both the product and the technical foundation.

What You’ll Work On

• Designing and building backend systems with Python, FastAPI, and SQLAlchemy.
• Managing high-throughput pipelines with Redis and asynchronous architectures.
• Owning scalability and reliability on AWS in a production environment.
• Establishing best practices for unit testing, code quality, and maintainability.
• Collaborating in an async-first communication style (Slack, docs, PRs) with minimal meetings.

Nice to Have

• Experience with React or frontend development.
• Prior startup experience or having built products 0→1.
• Interest in product direction and technical strategy, not just execution.

What We Value

• Good communication: clear, thoughtful, and async-friendly.
• Initiative: you take ownership, spot problems, and drive solutions.
• Experience: 7+ years building software, with a track record of taking systems from zero to production.
• Startup mindset: resourceful, adaptable, and excited to work as the core backend engineer on a small team.
• A pragmatic balance of speed and quality, with strong appreciation for testing and long-term reliability.