Founding Backend Engineer

About the Company photon.codes is building the adapter layer between AI agents and the places people actually communicate. Instead of forcing users into yet another chat app, we let anyone deploy agents directly into iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, and beyond — bridging the physical world and AI agents so people and agents can work side by side. We're early, growing fast, and backed to build this properly. About the Role As a founding backend engineer, you'll own core infrastructure from day one: the messaging adapter layer, the agent runtime, and the microservice architecture that ties them together. This is a high-ownership role — you’ll be making architectural decisions that outlive you, not picking up tickets. Responsibilities Design and build the adapter layer that connects agents to messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, SMS, and more)Architect and own backend microservices end to end — service boundaries, API contracts, data modeling, deployment, on-callBuild the agent runtime: orchestration, tool execution, state management, and failure handling across servicesSolve hard integration problems against platforms with inconsistent, undocumented, or hostile APIsSet engineering standards early — service templates, testing, observability, deploy practices — that the next 20 engineers inheritWork directly with the founders and early customers to ship fast and iterate on real feedback Qualifications 3+ years building production backend systems Required Skills Strong in at least one of Python, Go, TypeScript, or RustHands-on experience designing and operating microservices — service decomposition, inter-service communication (gRPC/REST/message queues), and knowing when not to split a serviceExperience with distributed systems, queues, and event-driven architecturesFamiliarity with containerized deployment (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CDComfort with ambiguity — you can take a vague problem and return a working systemBias toward shipping; you’d rather deploy something imperfect today than perfect it for a month Preferred Skills Built messaging or communications infrastructure before (Twilio, Signal protocol, XMPP, platform bot APIs)Worked with LLM applications in production — agent frameworks, tool calling, evalsEarly-stage startup experience, especially as an early hireTrack record of reverse-engineering or working around undocumented APIs Pay range and compensation package $180K–$250K base + meaningful founding equity Equal Opportunity Statement We are committed to diversity and inclusivity in our hiring practices.