Software Engineer, Backend
AI Summary
A backend engineer designs, builds, and optimizes large-scale, low-latency systems that power web-scale search and data processing pipelines.
About this role
Exa is an applied AI lab building a search engine unlike the world has ever seen. We build massive-scale infra to crawl the entire web, train state-of-the-art embedding models to process it, and design super high performant vector databases to retrieve over it. We now power search for Cursor, Cognition, HubSpot, and over 400,000 developers and have raised $350m from Lightspeed, Benchmark, and a16z.
Our ultimate goal is to build perfect search over all the world's information, far beyond Google. If you want to build massive-scale ML systems that will define the way the new AI world consumes information, this is the place for you.
As a backend engineer, you'd play a critical role in our search architecture. We're pretty flexible on what projects people work on based on their skills and interests.
Desired Experience
You have experience writing and maintaining high throughput, low latency systems
You can build data processing pipelines that deal with millions of documents per day
You’re comfortable optimizing a system to an exceptional degree
You care about the problem of finding high quality information and recognize how important this is for the world
Plus: Experience in some high performance language (C++, Rust, etc.)
Example Projects
Recreate Google-level keyword search over 10 billion pages in 1 month
Build a state-of-the-art crawling system that works optimally for any website
Build a custom vector database that runs over a billion vectors in under 100ms
Logistics
Location: This is an in-person opportunity in Singapore.
Visas: We’re happy to sponsor international candidates! While we cannot guarantee your visa, we have historically been successful in sponsoring candidates from all over the world. If you receive an offer, our team will work hard to get you a visa.
Benefits: We offer premium healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision), fertility benefits, 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.
Skills
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Market data for backend engineer roles
All reports →- Role reportBackend engineer jobs, Sep 2026: new listings up 22.7% in a weekBackend engineer new listings rose 22.7% this week to 481, with 4,949 active roles. Senior positions make up over half. Apply early to new openings.
- SeriesSalary reportsWhat employers publish in job postings, by level and workplace. Not self-reported pay.
- Market overviewState of tech hiring, September 2026: up 4.8%Tech hiring rose 4.8% month over month in September 2026, with 411,122 new listings. Customer support and account executive roles led the growth.
