About us
Candle AI is a fast-growing legal-tech startup based in Austin, TX. We provide Email Context Intelligence that helps legal teams respond faster, stay consistent and capture more billable time.
Backed by tier 1 investors including The Legal Tech Fund (TLTF), we’re building the infrastructure layer that makes AI-driven legal workflows reliable, secure and scalable.
The Role
We’re hiring a Founding Backend Engineer to own and scale the backend systems powering Candle. This is a backend-first role: you’ll design APIs, data models and event-driven services that support a multi-tenant AI product with strict security and reliability requirements.
You will be a key builder with real ownership, turning rough ideas into shipped features and shaping our architecture and engineering standards.
What You'll Build
- Serverless backend platform: AWS Lambda APIs and async workflows powering the core product.
- Multi-tenant architecture: secure data modeling and event-driven pipelines.
- Auth and integrations: OAuth 2.0 and OIDC flows and secure third-party interfaces.
- Infrastructure and operations: IaC, CI/CD, observability, performance and cost optimization.
- AI enablement layer: backend primitives that power context assembly, orchestration and evals.
Tech Stack
- Backend: Python (primary), TypeScript and Node.js (infra and tooling)
- AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SQS and EventBridge, S3, CloudWatch and X-Ray
- IaC: AWS CDK (TypeScript)
- Auth: OAuth 2.0, OIDC and AWS Cognito
What We’re Looking For
Required
- 5+ years building and owning production backend systems.
- Product-oriented execution: you turn ambiguity into shipped measurable outcomes.
- Strong experience with AWS serverless architectures including Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, SQS and EventBridge.
- Proven ability to design scalable multi-tenant systems with security and cost efficiency in mind.
- Hands-on experience implementing OAuth 2.0 and OIDC integrations.
- Strong infrastructure mindset including IaC, observability, reliability and operational rigor.
Highly Desired
- Experience with SOC 2 Type II, including IAM, encryption, tenant isolation and audit logging.
- Deep familiarity with AI tooling and LLM interfaces, including RAG patterns, embeddings, vector retrieval and orchestration workflows.
Ideal Candidate
- Systems thinker with strong backend depth across latency, reliability, cost and maintainability.
- Self-starter who ships quickly and raises the quality bar.
- Early-stage or founding-team experience.
Why This Role
- Founding impact: shape architecture and engineering culture from day one.
- High ownership: own major systems end-to-end and see them in production quickly.
- Tight product loops: work directly with law firms and design partners.
Location and Work Style
- Austin, TX (Hybrid)
- Small, highly technical team
- High ownership, fast iteration and strong bias toward shipping
- Hiring process may include a paid trial period to evaluate mutual fit
