Own and maintain the backend stack: build APIs and services in Node.js, manage deployments with Docker/Linux, design scalable REST APIs with Swagger, collaborate with hardware/frontend teams, and prepare sensor datasets for AI/ML pipelines with an eventual path to Lead AI Engineer.
Backend / Future AI Lead Engineer - Torch Systems (Bay Area)
What You’ll Do
Tech Stack & Requirements
You Are
Why Torch
About Torch
Torch is building the most accurate outdoor wildfire detection system in the world - a network of advanced IoT sensors and AI models that save lives, protect communities, and prevent billions in damage. We’re a small but high-performing team, backed by top-tier investors, with real deployments protecting critical infrastructure across California.
We’re looking for a Bay Area-based Backend Engineer who can immediately take ownership of our backend stack — and, over time, grow into our Lead AI Engineer as we scale our data pipeline, ML models, and real-time alerting systems. This is an opportunity to be at the intersection of climate tech, AI, and mission-critical hardware.
- Own and maintain our backend systems from day one.
- Develop APIs and services in Node.js (Fastify or similar frameworks).
- Manage deployments using Docker and Linux.
- Design and maintain scalable REST APIs with proper documentation in Swagger.
- Collaborate with our hardware and frontend teams to ensure seamless data flow.
- Work with massive real-world sensor datasets to prepare for AI/ML pipelines.
- Stay ahead of AI trends and help transition Torch into a data + AI powerhouse.
JavaScript / Node.js — 3+ years professional experience (5+ years if aiming for Lead).
- Strong experience with Docker, Linux server management.
- Fastify or other Node.js framework expertise.
- REST API design and implementation.
- Swagger (OpenAPI) documentation experience.
- Bonus: Familiarity with AI/ML tools (PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, etc.).
- Located in the San Francisco Bay Area (on-site collaboration preferred).
You Are
- A builder who thrives in early-stage environments.
- Comfortable switching between backend work and AI/ML experimentation.
- Energized by ownership — you see problems, you solve them.
- Excited by the mission of protecting people and infrastructure from wildfires.
Why Torch
- Mission with real-world impact.
- Significant ownership of your work.
- Small, elite team backed by top-tier VCs.
- Path to becoming Lead AI Engineer as we scale our data and AI stack.
Similar Jobs
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Consumer Web • Productivity • Software • App development • Data Privacy
Lead design, implementation, and operation of full-stack, customer-facing web experiences (Browse, Navigate, Preview). Drive architecture, tradeoffs, observability, testing, and on-call readiness. Partner with Product, Design, Data, Infrastructure, and platform teams, use approved AI tools responsibly, and own multi-phase rollouts, measurement, and cross-team alignment.
Top Skills:
Ai-Assisted WorkflowsC++GoJavaJavaScriptPythonReactTypescript
AdTech • Artificial Intelligence • Big Data • Machine Learning • Marketing Tech • Mobile • Software
Build and maintain scalable, reliable ML data platform systems to support dataset generation, model training, analytics, monitoring, and large-scale inference. Collaborate with ML, software, and infrastructure engineers to design cost-efficient data lake and training infrastructure using vendor and open-source tools to enable next-generation ML models.
Top Skills:
GoPython
Big Data • Fintech • Mobile • Payments • Financial Services
Build and operate ML training and serving infrastructure: design, develop, and launch backend systems, support availability and on-call, collaborate cross-functionally, and improve developer velocity.
Top Skills:
AWSKotlinKubernetesMySQLPython
What you need to know about the Ottawa Tech Scene
The capital city of Canada and the nation's fourth-largest urban area, Ottawa has proven a rapidly growing global tech hub. With over 1,800 tech companies, many of which are leaders in their sectors, the city's tech talent now makes up more than 13 percent of its total workforce. This growth is driven not only by the big players like UL Solutions and Dropbox, but also by a thriving startup ecosystem, as new businesses emerge to follow in the footsteps of those that came before them.
