Software Engineer, Backend

About this role

Mirage is an AI video company focused on making creation dramatically easier. Our team tackles some of the hardest creative and technical challenges in generative media. We get to rethink how people collaborate with AI that can actually do creative work with them—defining entirely new interaction paradigms for AI-native video tools. We make that possible by building multimodal agents that turn creative direction into edits, rendering engines that composite multiple layers of video and graphics, and generative video models trained from the ground up that create new media when needed. All of this comes together in Captions, our creative workspace for generating, editing, and designing video. The technology behind Captions is now available more broadly: Tesseract gives any AI agent native video-editing capabilities, while developers can integrate our models into their own products through APIs.

Explore our work Captions — Our flagship creative workspace Tesseract — Our professional video engine for AI agents Research — The foundation models we build in-house Updates — The latest from Mirage TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company — Press

Our Investors We’re very fortunate to have some the best investors and entrepreneurs backing us, including Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Uncommon Projects, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Lenny Rachitsky, Antoine Martin, Julie Zhuo, Ben Rubin, Jaren Glover, SVAngel, 20VC, Ludlow Ventures, Chapter One, and more. Please note that all of our roles will require you to be in-person at our NYC HQ (located in Union Square) About the role Backend engineering at Mirage isn’t narrowly defined. We work across product, platform, and machine learning—building the systems, services, APIs, and ML pipelines that power all of our product surfaces. You’ll own critical backend systems end-to-end, partnering closely with product, design, client, and AI teams to turn ambitious ideas into reliable, scalable production systems. This opportunity is ideal for engineers who enjoy solving complex technical problems while staying connected to product and user outcomes. While we don’t use hierarchical titles or levels internally, we are currently hiring engineers who have operated at senior or staff+ scope. Responsibilities Design, build, and own backend systems end-to-end, including services, APIs, data pipelines, and infrastructure that power our products

Solve complex technical challenges across distributed systems, scaling, concurrency, and performance

Integrate and operate large generative AI models in production—deploying, serving, and scaling systems that combine internal research and external capabilities to unlock new product experiences.

Instrument, experiment, and iterate in production to continuously improve system and product quality

Design and operate core platform infrastructure, including integrations with third-party providers, storage systems, security, and internal APIs

What Makes You a Great Fit 5+ years of professional industry experience

A track record of shipping high‑impact systems and/or products in production

Exceptional problem solving fundamentals and ability to learn

Excellent engineering taste combined with a strong sense of practicality and time-management

Able to operate effectively in an extremely fast-paced environment as well as scope and deliver projects end-to-end

Even better if... You have worked extensively with LLMs, generative media models, and have a pulse on where the technology is going

You are grounded, collaborative, and willing to do whatever it takes to help the team win

You have been a startup founder or an early engineer at one

Benefits:Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans

401K with employer match

Commuter Benefits

Catered lunch multiple days per week

Dinner stipend every night if you're working late and want a bite!

Grubhub subscription

Health & Wellness Perks

Multiple team offsites per year with team events every month

Generous PTO policy

Captions provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Please note benefits apply to full time employees only.