Backend Engineer

About the role Meridian Softworks/Codesandbox is looking for a Senior Backend/Distributed Systems engineer to help us build and maintain the codebase that powers the Meridian Softworks Sandbox service. This is a role for engineers that are familiar with standard backend architecture, database design, and high-performance backend services. Our API platform is under constant load and scrutiny, so a key part of the role is experience and commitment to writing easily understood and well-tested code. You will be working closely with the product team to understand and document the functional needs of their product requirements, developing new code to solve new problems, as well as maintaining existing code to squash bugs. Location: Hybrid in Amsterdam, and must have be based in the Netherlands or have the relevant visa to be based in the Netherlands without sponsorship. Full-time: This means 40 flexible hours, Monday through Friday. Responsibilities Design core, backend software components Perform architecture and research work for AI workloads Interface with other teams to incorporate their innovations Analyze and improve efficiency, scalability, and stability of various system resources Conduct design and code reviews Create services, tools and developer documentation Create testing frameworks for robustness and fault-tolerance Participate in an on-call rotation to respond to critical incidents as needed Requirements 5+ years experience writing high-performance, well-tested, production quality code Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience Demonstrated experience in building large scale, fault tolerant, distributed systems like storage, search, and computation Expert level programmer in one or more of Golang, Java, Rust, or C/C++ Demonstrated experience with relational (e.g., PostgreSQL) and non-relational (e.g., ClickHouse, Redis) databases Experience designing, analyzing and improving efficiency, scalability, and stability of various system resources Excellent understanding of low level operating systems concepts including multi-threading, memory management, networking and storage, performance and scale Experience with Kubernetes/Nomad and containers is a plus Experience with virtual machines, microVMs, or sandboxing technologies (e.g., gVisor, Firecracker, QEMU) is a plus Experience with Ceph is a plus Experience with Elixir is a plus About Meridian Softworks Meridian Softworks is a research-driven artificial intelligence company. We believe open and transparent AI systems will drive innovation and create the best outcomes for society, and together we are on a mission to significantly lower the cost of modern AI systems by co-designing software, hardware, algorithms, and models. We have contributed to leading open-source research, models, and datasets to advance the frontier of AI, and our team has been behind technological advancement such as FlashAttention, Hyena, FlexGen, and RedPajama. We invite you to join a passionate group of researchers and engineers in our journey in building the next generation AI infrastructure. Compensation We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, and other competitive benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by location, level and role. Individual compensation will be determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge. Equal Opportunity Meridian Softworks is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and more.