Backend Cloud Engineer

Company description.

Silpa Recruiting, the staffing division of Silpa Companies, LLC, is partnering with a well-funded AI-native cybersecurity platform company on this Backend Cloud Engineer search. Our client is led by a team of experienced repeat founders with deep cybersecurity-industry backgrounds, and has earned the trust of Fortune 500 and Global 1000 enterprises with an agentic-AI platform that replaces fragmented, human-limited security workflows with AI systems that continuously contextualize, assess, reason, and execute security work at production speed. The leadership team across AI, engineering, and product brings deep experience from leading technology companies, and an in-house applied AI research function pushes the leading edge of agentic AI in production cybersecurity systems. Our client is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building a workforce that reflects a diversity of experience and perspective; all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or other legally protected characteristic. Silpa Companies is a national IT consulting and staffing firm empowering organizations across multiple industries through AI adoption, Master Data Management, Data and Analytics, Cybersecurity, Cloud Engineering, DevSecOps/GitOps, Fractional C-Suite leadership, Digital Transformation, and M&A advisory for private equity and software ventures. Our staffing practice connects top technical talent with the venture-backed, growth-stage, and enterprise organizations that need them.

Role description.

Our client is hiring a Backend Cloud Engineer to collaborate with cross-functional teams building cloud backends and data pipelines that power the agentic-AI cybersecurity platform. You will lead technical delivery from architecture and design through implementation, testing, deployment, and operations across AWS and Azure environments, championing software-development best practices including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and test automation. The bar that matters most for this role: you must be a competent backend software engineer first, with a strong working understanding of DevOps practice — this is not a DevOps role, it is a backend role with cloud-native depth. You will be expected to operate as a senior individual contributor across multi-cloud surfaces with Python as the primary language and serverless architectures as the primary delivery model, ensuring reliability, scalability, and maintainability of the backend services and data pipelines that Fortune 500 customers depend on. The role reports into engineering leadership. Success in this role typically looks like: within the first 3 to 6 months, you have shipped meaningful backend functionality across AWS and Azure surfaces, are familiar with the codebase and on-call rotation, and are partnering effectively with the data-engineering and platform teams; within the first 12 months, you own one or more backend services end-to-end, are recognized as a senior cloud-engineering voice on cross-cutting initiatives, and have meaningfully raised the bar on observability, IaC, or test-automation practice on at least one major surface.

Key responsibilities.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, AI, Engineering, Customer Success) on building cloud backends and data pipelines that power the agentic-AI security platform.
• Lead technical delivery from architecture and design through implementation, testing, deployment, and operations on assigned backend surfaces.
• Design and build APIs and asynchronous backend systems with robust error handling, retries, idempotency, and the production-quality practice that enterprise customers expect.
• Architect and operate serverless backends on AWS (API Gateway, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, IAM, CDK) at production scale.
• Design and operate Azure-side cloud surfaces (API Management, Azure Functions, Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Azure AD, Bicep / Terraform) including the multi-cloud integration practice.
• Build and operate cloud-native data pipelines and streaming architectures using AWS Kinesis, Kafka, or comparable.
• Champion software-development best practices including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, distributed tracing, and test automation across the backend services.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and maintainability of backend and cloud systems including the published incident-response practice and the partnership with the broader engineering team on the SLO-and-incident practice.
• Foster a culture of ownership, learning, and continuous improvement within the engineering team including code-review craft, design-document craft, and the senior-engineer mentorship practice.
• Help shape responsible adoption of AI-assisted developer tooling on the engineering team including LLM-based code-generation, AI-assisted code-review tooling, and the engineering-judgment practice that surrounds them.
• Author Architecture Decision Records, design documents, and runbooks on the cloud-backend surfaces you own.
• Partner with Product and Design on delivering performant and reliable user experiences for backend services and APIs.

What we’re looking for.

• 8 or more years of professional experience as a cloud or backend engineer at production scale.
• Hands-on experience as an engineer at a venture-backed or growth-stage startup; this is a hard requirement, not a preference.
• Strong identity as a backend software engineer first, with working understanding of DevOps practice (CI/CD, IaC, observability) — this is not a DevOps role.
• Strong production experience designing APIs and building asynchronous systems with robust error handling, retries, idempotency, and the partnership-with-clients practice that distributed backend systems require.
• Hands-on production experience with AWS including serverless architectures (API Gateway, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, IAM, CDK or comparable IaC).
• Hands-on production experience with Azure services and Infrastructure-as-Code tools including some combination of API Management, Azure Functions, Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Azure Active Directory, and Bicep or Terraform.
• Strong production experience with Python for backend services, automation, and tooling.
• Hands-on production experience with cloud-native data pipelines and streaming tools such as AWS Kinesis, Kafka, or comparable.
• Working knowledge of observability, distributed tracing, and system-performance best practices for distributed backend systems.
• Excellent communication skills and demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with distributed cross-functional teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.

Eligibility requirements.

• Authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship.
• Willing and able to work in the client's North San Jose, CA office five days per week.
• Successful completion of background check.
• Ability to travel 1 to 3 times per year for company offsites and major industry events.

Why join us?

You will join a well-funded AI-native cybersecurity platform company at a stage where the cloud-backend decisions you make have direct, durable impact on the platform that Fortune 500 security teams already trust. The capital position is strong, the founding team has deep category experience, the engineering and AI leadership is drawn from leading technology companies, and the in-house applied AI research function operates at the leading edge of agentic AI. The engineering culture rests on four pillars our client has been deliberate about: ownership and leadership (engineers make decisions and own outcomes), mentorship and growth (learn from category-experienced operators and work at the frontier of AI and cybersecurity), collaboration and inclusion (diverse perspectives that challenge the status quo and fuel innovation), and impact mindset (every line of code contributes to shaping the future of enterprise security). The hiring process is structured and respectful of your time: an initial conversation with the Silpa recruiting partner to align on background and motivations, an interview with engineering leadership to discuss role context and prior work, a technical interview focused on Python depth and cloud-backend system design, and a final loop of 3 to 4 interviews covering coding, system design, and team fit, followed by reference checks and offer. Compensation is materially equity-and-bonus weighted with highly competitive base salaries, meaningful equity options, and the kind of upside profile that draws senior cloud engineers in the Bay Area cybersecurity-and-AI market.

Benefits.

• Highly competitive base salary plus annual performance bonus and meaningful early-stage-style equity participation
• Full medical, dental, and vision coverage with multiple plan options
• 401(k) plan
• Generous PTO accrual plus paid holidays and parental leave
• Annual learning, development, and conference budget plus paid attendance at AWS re:Invent, Microsoft Build, KubeCon, RSAC, or comparable
• Daily catered meals, snacks, and beverages at the North San Jose office
• Onsite gym, parking, and EV charging at the office
• Mental health support and wellness programs
• High-end engineering laptop and home-office-and-on-site workstation setup
• Annual company offsite plus engineering team offsites