Staff Engineer, Backend Systems

Lightfield is an AI-native CRM company that is rethinking the CRM landscape by creating a platform that learns from how companies work. They are seeking a Staff Engineer to lead the architecture and execution of backend systems that power their core product, focusing on API design, data architecture, and technical leadership.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the architecture and execution of Lightfield's most critical backend work streams - API platform, core data model, and systems that underpin new product capabilities
• Scale our API platform: multi-tenant isolation, versioning, rate limits/quotas, idempotency, and measurable latency/throughput goals
• Partner with co-founders and product leadership to translate product direction into backend architecture decisions
• Explore and ship agentic capabilities that require safe sandbox code execution (isolation, resource limits, auditability, security guardrails)
• Design and ship customer-defined CRM schema (custom fields, custom objects, flexible relationships) without sacrificing query performance or clean APIs
• Lead complex projects end-to-end - for example, taking custom objects from data model → migrations → query patterns → API ergonomics
• Own the abstractions that the broader engineering team builds on top of
• Raise the bar through design leadership, code review, and technical mentorship
• Contribute to hiring as the team grows - helping identify and close strong technical talent