Virtasant: Senior Backend / Product Engineer (AI Platform)

Headquarters: Frost Bank Tower Austin, North America, 78701 United States Senior Backend / Product Engineer (AI Platform) Location: Remote Type: Full-time Team: Cost Optimisation (CO) – Product Engineering Reports to: Product Lead (CO) About Virtasant Virtasant is a global technology services company with a network of over 4,000 professionals across 130+ countries. We specialise in cloud architecture, engineering, and transformation, helping enterprises deliver at scale while building internal capability and reducing third-party dependency. We work with ambitious, forward-thinking organisations to solve real-world challenges through hands-on execution, deep technical expertise, and a delivery-led approach. The Role We’re hiring a senior backend-first product engineer to help build and scale our AI-powered cost intelligence platform. This role is explicitly product-focused. You will not be pulled into client delivery. Your mission is to build core platform capabilities that mature our current FinOps platform into a smart intelligence platform - including AI-driven insights, workflows, and agent-based features that can be sold as standalone capabilities. You’ll operate with high autonomy, significant ownership, and direct access to product leadership. Think founding engineer energy , without the chaos. You will help define how AI capabilities move from experimentation to durable product features, with an emphasis on reliability, cost efficiency, and clear user value - not just model novelty. What You’ll Be Doing • Design and build backend-heavy platform features for our platform • Productionalise AI-enabled capabilities (e.g. anomaly detection, recommendations, agent-based workflows) • Implement AI thoughtfully across the entire SDLC - prototyping, testing, iteration, and deployment • Collaborate closely with Product to turn vision into shipped features • Identify blockers early, communicate clearly, and iterate fast • Help shape engineering standards and patterns as the product matures • You will help define how AI capabilities move from experimentation to durable product features, with an emphasis on reliability, cost efficiency, and clear user value - not just model novelty. • Design systems that support model evaluation, prompt/version management, and deterministic fallbacks to ensure AI-driven features are observable, testable, and production-safe. • Build AI features with explicit evaluation criteria, feedback loops, and guardrails (accuracy, latency, cost, and explainability) so models improve predictably over time. Success in the first 6–12 months looks like: • 2+ production-ready features shipped • Tangible progress towards operating as a smart intelligence platform • Clear, repeatable engineering patterns for AI-enabled development • Utilize lightweight but rigorous AI engineering practices (evaluation harnesses, rollout strategies, and rollback mechanisms) that allow the platform to scale AI features safely and repeatedly. What We’re Looking For (Non-Negotiables) • 5+ years professional software engineering experience • Strong backend engineering background (full-stack a plus, not required) • Hands-on experience building on AWS • Strong proficiency in Python (Java/C++ acceptable as secondary languages) • Demonstrated experience using AI in real production systems (not just experimentation - clear, repeatable patterns) • Comfortable working in ambiguity with product-led direction • Ability to architect backend services that support asynchronous workflows, event-driven pipelines, and AI agents that operate over time rather than single request/response cycles. • Comfort articulating why certain AI approaches were not used, including trade-offs around latency, explainability, data availability, or long-term maintainability. What Matters More Than Checklists We care deeply about how you think and build, not just what tools you’ve used. We’re looking for engineers who can: • Tell a compelling story about a product journey, not just features shipped • Explain why decisions were made and what trade-offs were considered • Fail fast, learn quickly, and iterate relentlessly • Clearly articulate technical roadblocks and collaborate on solutions • Thrive in a fast-paced, high-ownership environment What This Role Is Not • Not a Solutions Architect role • Not client-facing delivery work • Not a support or “overflow” engineering position This role is protected, by design, to focus on product and platform . Why This Role Stands Out • You’ll work on a real AI product , not internal tooling or demos • Near-founding-engineer level autonomy and influence • Direct impact on product direction and commercial outcomes • Opportunity to help shape a platform with standalone, licensable AI capabilities • A rare chance to build product inside a consultancy without being consumed by client work • You’ll build AI capabilities informed by real enterprise-scale cost and usage data, enabling smarter models and workflows than greenfield or synthetic-data products. Why Virtasant • High ownership, high trust environment • Opportunity to own and shape technical delivery at scale • Work closely with experienced engineering and delivery teams • Exposure to broader cloud optimisation and consulting initiatives over time To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/virtasant-senior-backend-product-engineer-ai-platform