Senior / Staff Backend Engineer, Hedra
$175-275k
+ Equity
Creation lab building foundation models for next-gen human storytelling
Open for applications
Creation lab building foundation models for next-gen human storytelling
1-20 employees
Open for applications
$175-275k
+ Equity
1-20 employees
Company mission
To build foundation models into products that power the next generation of human storytelling.
Role
Who you are
- You should have start-up experience and be a self-starter that is driven to build impactful products that change the status quo
- Experience developing scalable services using Python
- Experience developing RESTFUL APIs using frameworks such as FastAPI and Pydantic
- Familiarity with authentication / authorization, utilizing standards such as oauth2, OIDC, and JWT
- Experience working with relational and noSQL datastores (such as DynamoDB)
- Experience writing unit and integration tests and working with CI/CD and dev-containers
- Experience writing scalable, async code and leveraging asyncio, generators, coroutines
- Experience building and scaling cloud-based infrastructure leveraging Kubernetes and EKS
- Familiarity with AWS IAM, IRSA, ALB/NLB, route53, S3, lambda
- Familiarity leveraging schema-registry, and serialization protocols such as avro, parquet, and JSON-schema
- Experience developing/scaling pipelines, event streaming/processing in AWS, using tools such as SQS or Kafka
- Startup Experience is a must — we work hard and build quickly. Ideal candidates should be passionate with an always-on attitude that drives them to live and breathe the product (not a “punch the clock” disposition)
- Experience architecting and implementing REST APIs for distributed systems
- Experience with k8s, docker, especially in the context of deploying machine learning models on nvidia hardware
- Familiarity with audio/video web standards and tools, such as Webcodecs, webRTC, HLS, MP-DASH, FFMPEG, MP4, and MKV a plus
- At least 5 years of professional Python or Golang
- Self-motivated and independent — able to set accurate timelines for development and deliver on them. Have an opinion and the experience to backup that opinion
- Low ego, high patience, strong communication skills
- Understand operational costs and overhead short and long term
- Mission-driven — we are building something fundamentally disruptive and this reflects deeply in our company DNA
- And most importantly, treat Hedra as your own and help shape the vision accordingly
What the job involves
- As we continue to expand, we're seeking a dynamic individual to lead marketing and propel Hedra to new heights
- As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design, build, and deploy the backend services that power our transformative products, including Create, Stylize, and Studio
- You will work with web and video standards to power our suite of web-based video and audio creation / editing tools
- You will also dive deep into video container formats and streaming protocols, such as MP4, MKV, HLS, and MP-DASH, and work with tools such as FFMPEG
- You will also work on building and deploying backend services and APIs to our Kubernetes infrastructure, write secure, stable, and scalable Python code, interface with our ground-breaking foundation model, and integrate with SQS, Kafka, S3, and DynamoDB to implement event streaming/processing logic
- You will work with passionate engineers and top researchers to build a truly disruptive and novel technology
Our take
The relationship between machine learning and online content has grown closer in recent years, and Hedra is a video content platform that is pushing this symbiosis into new territory. Describing itself as a video foundation mode company, Hedra is building an online creation studio that helps users generate dialogue, audio and video from words.
As a digital presence automation tool, Hedra is moving beyond the likes of DallE and generative AI video content into more nuanced territory. Its most recent product is Character1, a video foundation model for longer-form video generation focusing on customizable AI-generated video characters.
Since Character1’s release in June 2024, more than 1.6 million videos have been generated via the platform, demonstrating the need for its August seed funding round. The $10 million investment will be channelled into developing new technology like a multimodal studio and workflow tool to complement its foundation model.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
May 2025
$32m
SERIES A
Aug 2024
$10m
SEED
Total funding: $42m
Company benefits
- Equity
- 401k (no match)
- Healthcare (Silver PPO Medical, Vision, Dental)
- Gym access (at our office)
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Michael Lingelbach
(Founder & CEO)Previously Regina Casper Graduate Research Fellow at Stanford University, was an Intern at NVIDIA, Postbaccaulaureate researcher at Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a Scholar at the Janelia Research Campus.
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