Key skills
TypeScriptPythonGoSQLAIMLLLMOpenAIAnthropicGeminiRAGAgenticData EngineeringAWSTerraformKubernetesDockerEKSPostgreSQLRedisCI/CD
About this role
Flock Safety is the leading safety technology platform focused on crime prevention and security. They are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to lead the architectural evolution of Nightshift, a conversational AI assistant designed to aid investigators in closing cases faster by developing complex backend systems and APIs.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the architectural evolution of Nightshift, a conversational AI assistant
- Design the orchestration backend that manages complex LLM interactions
- Develop high-performance integration pipelines connecting our AI to Flock's massive data platform
- Build the agentic framework that allows Nightshift to 'act' on behalf of investigators
- Partner with ML engineers on agentic workflows and platform teams to design robust APIs
- Solve the reliability and scaling challenges of deploying AI in high-stakes, real-time investigative workflows
- Familiarize yourself with Flock’s investigative workflows and the massive data pipelines that power our platform
- Pair with ML (agentic systems), Data Engineering (investigative datasets), and Platform teams to understand the existing API landscape
- Complete your first push to production
- Implement the backend orchestration layer for LLM tool calling and multi-step reasoning
- Design and build the 'connectors' that allow Night Shift to securely and efficiently query Flock’s core data services
- Stand up robust tracing and logging for the AI system to monitor agentic decision-making and reliability
- Own end-to-end backend features that connect the LLM to our internal APIs, ensuring low-latency responses for investigators
- Lead the development of a core Nightshift capability—like automated lead generation or cross-camera correlation—that demonstrably closes cases faster
- Establish best practices for testing and deploying AI agents within a microservices environment
- Influence the product direction by identifying how new backend capabilities or AI breakthroughs can solve untapped investigator pain points
Requirements:
- Love for writing clean, performant code and a track record of building production-grade backend systems
- Strong proficiency in Python and TypeScript (Node) for building scalable web services, open to Go as well
- Experience with agentic patterns, including function calling, tool use (MCP), and orchestrating multi-step LLM workflows
- Ability to write and optimize complex SQL queries and data access patterns to ensure LLMs are grounded in real-time data without sacrificing latency or system performance
- Deep understanding of OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini APIs, prompt engineering, and managing complex conversation state/context
- Proven ability to build seamless API integrations with LLMs, managing the bridge between unstructured model outputs and structured internal services through robust error handling and schema validation
- Strong database confidence with PostgreSQL, OLAP Databases, and Redis
- Experience with microservice-oriented architecture and designing for scale (we handle 1B+ images daily)
- Proficient with AWS services, Kubernetes (EKS), Docker, and CI/CD build tooling
- You thrive in 'zero-to-one' environments, taking ambiguous problems and turning them into technical roadmaps
- Experience with LLM evaluation (LangSmith/Langfuse), vector search/RAG, or infrastructure-as-code (Terraform)
- Ability to obtain and maintain Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) certification as a condition of employment