Hybrid Senior Backend Software Engineer

at Twelve Labs

• Job title: Senior Backend Software Engineer
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: $145,000 - $190,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Cloud, Distributed Systems, Docker, FFmpeg, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Microservices, Python
• Location requirements: Hybrid, San Francisco, United States

About the role

• Senior Backend Software Engineer at Twelve Labs building infrastructure for video processing workflows and integrating computer vision models in scalable backend services.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services for video processing workflows — ingestion, transcoding, 4K export, metadata extraction, and timeline operations
• Architect scalable, high-availability systems to support enterprise-grade video workloads across cloud-native infrastructure (AWS, GCP)
• Build and optimize APIs that power real-time and async frontend workflows, including streaming data delivery and long-running job orchestration
• Own performance and reliability for distributed video processing pipelines with low latency and high throughput requirements
• Collaborate closely with frontend engineers on API design, data models, and streaming strategies
• Integrate and run inference on computer vision models for tasks like video resizing, scene detection, automatic audio noise cleaning, and visual analysis
• Deploy and serve ML models on cloud-based or cloud-native platforms — evaluate build-vs-buy for model serving and SaaS alternatives
• Work with the research team to productionize model outputs into reliable, scalable backend services
• Build pipelines that bridge TwelveLabs’ foundation models with third-party CV models to power intelligent video workflows

Requirements

• 7+ years building production backend systems with a track record of designing scalable web services and APIs
• Experience with video-specific tools and frameworks (FFmpeg, AWS Media Services, transcoding pipelines)
• Deep experience with service-oriented architecture, microservices, and distributed systems
• Strong proficiency in Python for backend services, model integration, and tooling
• Hands-on experience running inference on ML/CV models in production — not research, but engineering models into reliable services
• Cloud-native development experience (AWS or GCP), including containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and serverless patterns
• Comfort working across the stack and making pragmatic tradeoffs in a fast-moving product environment

Benefits

• Full health, dental, and vision benefits
• Extremely flexible PTO and parental leave policy. Office closed the week of Christmas and New Years.
• VISA support where applicable