Cascade AI helps HR organizations transform how they operate with AI agents that automate critical HR functions, including support, open enrollment, onboarding, leave of absence, compensation, and more.

Our agents do far more than provide answers. They execute processes and workflows, streamline HR operations, and deliver employees the help they need instantly and conversationally. By combining Large Language Models (LLMs) with an organization's existing HR technology stack, Cascade agents streamline operations, improve employee experience, and unlock significant cost savings.

Cascade is deployed globally, with users on every continent, and supports multi-lingual workforces. We are proudly backed by Gradient Ventures, Google's AI fund, and trusted by Fortune 100 companies and leading enterprises, many of whom sign multi-year contracts. Founded by two former Microsoft engineers through the MIT Sandbox Innovation program, Cascade is now one of the fastest-growing AI companies in HR technology.

We have an exceptional advising team, including industry leaders such as the former VP of People Ops at Google and former CHRO of Airbnb.

If you like to work at the intersection of AI and cloud, collaborate across the organization, and thrive in a fast-paced startup environment, this role could be a great fit. Everyone joining at this stage will wear multiple hats and work across the product surface.

Role: Backend Engineer II

As a Backend Engineer II at Cascade, you will build and own core backend systems that power AI agents automating real HR work at scale. This is a hands-on role where you’ll ship production code weekly, take ownership of meaningful systems, and help define how AI agents execute complex workflows inside large enterprises.

You’ll work across APIs, data models, integrations, and LLM orchestration, turning ambiguous product needs into reliable, scalable backend systems. You’ll collaborate closely with product, frontend, and customer-facing teams, and you’ll be trusted to make good engineering decisions without heavy process or layers.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy moving fast without cutting corners, taking ownership, and building systems that are used daily by tens of thousands of people.

Level and Reporting

This is a mid-level backend engineering role.
This role reports directly to Cascade’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO).

Location & Work Environment

This is a hybrid role based in Bellevue, WA. We expect team members to work from our Bellevue office four days per week to foster collaboration, accelerate learning, and build strong team cohesion. In-person time is critical for early-stage engineers to grow quickly, get real-time feedback, and stay aligned with the team.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $130k –$150k base, depending on experience.
Equity: meaningful stock options so you share in Cascade’s upside.
Benefits:
Competitive health coverage.
401(k).
Unlimited PTO, with an emphasis on taking time off to recharge.

Work Authorization

We are not able to sponsor visas for this role at this time.
Candidates must be eligible to work in the United States.

Our Tech Stack

You don’t need to have used all of these, but you should be excited to work in an environment that looks like this:

Backend frameworks: Python with Flask and FastAPI.
Cloud & infra: GCP, Firebase, Kubernetes.
Data & search: PostgreSQL, Firestore, Elasticsearch.
AI & orchestration: LangChain and modern LLM providers.
Plus integrations with HRIS, ticketing, and communication tools.

What You’ll Do

Build, own, and evolve backend services that power Cascade’s AI agent platform.
Design and implement APIs that support conversational interactions, task execution, and long-running workflows.
Develop and iterate on LLM orchestration logic in Python, including prompt execution, tool calling, state management, and evaluation.
Integrate deeply with enterprise systems such as HRIS platforms (Workday, ADP, UKG), ticketing tools (ServiceNow, Jira), and communication tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams).
Design data models and storage layers across relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, Firestore).
Build ingestion and retrieval pipelines for HR documents and structured data used by AI agents.
Implement authentication, authorization, and access controls to meet enterprise security and compliance requirements.
Own production reliability for your systems, including monitoring, alerting, debugging, and performance tuning.
Work closely with frontend, product, and customer teams to ship end-to-end features quickly and iteratively.
Make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, quality, and scalability as the product and company grow.
Participate in an on-call rotation and help improve our incident response and reliability practices over time.

What You’ll Need

Minimum Qualifications

3+ years of professional backend engineering experience in production environments.
Strong proficiency in Python, including experience building backend services and data-intensive systems.
Experience designing and building APIs and backend services from scratch.
Solid understanding of data modeling and databases, including SQL (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL systems (for example, Firestore or DynamoDB).
Experience working with cloud infrastructure (GCP, Azure, or AWS).
Familiarity with containerization and deployment workflows (Docker; Kubernetes is a plus).
Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, testing, performance, and reliability.
Experience working in small, fast-moving teams where engineers own features end to end.
Comfort operating with ambiguity and evolving requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building LLM-powered systems or AI-driven workflows in production.
Familiarity with enterprise integrations (HRIS, ticketing systems, SSO via SAML/OIDC).
Experience with background jobs, async processing, or event-driven systems.
Knowledge of security best practices for handling sensitive data.
Experience operating and debugging production systems using logs, metrics, and traces.
Prior experience at a startup or in a high-growth environment.
A track record of taking ownership and driving projects to completion.

Who We’re Looking For

A backend engineer with strong fundamentals and sound engineering judgment.
Someone who prefers ownership over narrow scope and is comfortable being “on the hook” for what they build.
Product-minded and focused on real customer impact, not just technical correctness.
Pragmatic and detail-oriented, with a bias toward shipping and iterating.
Curious about AI and motivated to make LLMs useful, reliable, and safe in real-world systems.
Comfortable moving fast, making decisions, and improving systems over time.
A clear communicator who collaborates well across disciplines.
Excited to grow with Cascade and take on increasing responsibility as the company scales.

How We Hire

Cascade AI welcomes candidates from all backgrounds. We’re committed to building a fair, inclusive hiring process and an environment where people can do their best work.

Here’s what you can expect from our hiring process for this role:

Introduction call with a member of the engineering team.
Technical screens (coding) focused on practical backend problems.
System design / architecture interview exploring how you design and scale systems.
Team / culture conversation with a founder.
Final decision and references before we extend an offer.

Timeline & Start Date

We’re actively interviewing for this role and can move quickly for the right candidate.

Apply now

See more open positions at Cascade AI

Privacy policy Cookie policy