Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Winston Artory Group is transforming how art and collectibles are valued, managed, and traded. They are seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to lead the technical architecture of their backend systems, mentor future engineers, and collaborate closely with company leadership to build scalable systems that leverage AI and blockchain technologies.
Responsibilities
- Own the entire backend architecture from day one—make the critical decisions on frameworks, databases, infrastructure, and patterns
- Define technical standards and best practices for code quality, testing, documentation, and deployment
- Lead system design for complex problems involving data ingestion, LLM orchestration, and real-time analytics
- Mentor and guide future backend engineers as the team grows (you'll likely hire and lead 2-3 backend engineers in your first year)
- Evaluate and adopt new technologies that improve velocity, reliability, or capabilities
- Build and scale core backend systems to ingest, clean, and serve structured data at scale
- Design clean, performant APIs to power our client portal, data tools, and internal services
- Integrate and orchestrate LLM APIs (e.g. OpenAI, Claude, open-source models) for use in appraisal automation, data extraction, and insight generation
- Architect event-driven systems and asynchronous pipelines (queues, pub/sub) for reliability and scale
- Own our infrastructure including CI/CD, observability, monitoring, and IaC (Terraform, AWS)
- Co-own technical vision with Head of Engineering: collaborate daily on architecture, technical roadmap, and engineering standards
- Partner closely with CPO and product team to shape roadmap based on technical feasibility and effort
- Collaborate with data and frontend engineers to define APIs, contracts, and integration patterns
- Work with company leadership (Head of Engineering, CPO, President) on technical strategy, hiring, and long-term platform vision
- Communicate technical decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders
Skills
- Education: B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent
- Experience: 7+ years of backend engineering experience with at least 2+ years in a technical lead, staff, or principal role at a high-growth startup or product company
- Leadership: Proven track record of mentoring engineers, leading technical initiatives, and making architectural decisions that scale
- Technical Skills: Expert in Python with deep understanding of performance, concurrency, and design patterns
- Strong database expertise (PostgreSQL or similar) including query optimization, schema design, and data modeling
- Hands-on experience with LLM/AI integration in production systems—you've shipped features using OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source models
- Deep knowledge of distributed systems including event-driven architectures, message queues, and async patterns (Celery, Kafka, SQS, etc.)
- Production experience with AWS (or GCP/Azure) including compute, storage, networking, and managed services
- Strong DevOps fundamentals: Docker, Kubernetes/ECS, Terraform, CI/CD, monitoring/observability
- Data engineering fluency: ETL/ELT patterns, data lakes vs. warehouses, pipeline orchestration
- Mindset: You balance pragmatism with technical excellence—you know when to move fast and when to invest in infrastructure
- You have a bias toward simplicity and can articulate tradeoffs clearly
- You're excited about AI tooling and actively use tools like Cursor, Claude, or Copilot to increase velocity
- You thrive in ambiguity and can chart technical direction with incomplete information
- Experience building 0→1 products at early-stage startups (seed through Series B)
- Prior tech lead or staff engineer experience at a Series A+ company
- Experience with ML/AI model deployment and managing inference costs/latency
- Familiarity with data warehousing (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) and analytics tools
- Domain knowledge in art, collectibles, fintech, or fragmented asset classes
- Experience hiring and building teams (you'll be involved in hiring future backend engineers)
- Ability to occasionally travel to our NYC office
Benefits
- A friendly, international, agile team that works together with cutting-edge technologies
- Generous paid time off, including vacation, sick days, and holidays
- Paid parental leave (maternity, paternity, adoption, leave)
- Paid volunteer days to encourage community involvement
- Collaborative, innovative, and inclusive company culture
- Employee recognition and appreciation programs
- Team-building activities and social events
- Transparent communication and feedback channels
- Competitive salary based on experience and skills
- Discretionary performance-based bonuses
- Equity option grants of company shares, offering alignment with company success
- Comprehensive health insurance (medical, dental, and vision) with employees covered 100%
- On-site in our NY HQ fitness center and sauna
- Generous leave policies, including bereavement and reproductive loss leave
- Opportunities for continuous learning and training
- Mentorship programs and leadership development initiatives
- 401(k)
- Life insurance and disability coverage
- Snacks in the office
Company Overview