Software Engineer, Backend (Senior) - Clubhouse

About Us

Alpha is a product studio focused on the intersection of AI and consumer social – backed by a16z and many of the top investors in the world. Our goal is to create social products that we use, that our friends use, and that have the potential to reach billions of people.

Clubhouse was our first app, and we’ve been quietly growing that while building our next set of products. We have years of runway, millions of users, and find ourselves at a very interesting time, where AI is making entirely new things possible with voice.

The Role

We're hiring an early to mid-level Senior Backend Engineer to join our server engineering team. This role sits on our Core squad, which owns rapid product explorations, app quality, and monetization features for Clubhouse Plus users. We’re looking for engineers who think at a systems level, ship with urgency, and build with a platform mindset — whether they're delivering a user-facing feature or designing a shared service.

You'll work in a highly collaborative environment with our founders, product, design, and data science to:

• Solve a dynamic set of user problems across the product
• Ship new product launches and platform capabilities at speed
• Improve our monetization features, app quality, and backend reliability
• Iteratively improve a legacy codebase while keeping an eye on long-term maintainability

Who You Are

• You are experienced and curious: You have 4–5 years of backend development experience with a strong foundation in languages like Python or Java, and experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB).
• You think at a systems level: You understand the tradeoffs in evolving a legacy codebase, balancing short-term velocity with long-term maintainability, and mapping out edge cases.
• You build with a platform mindset: You think about API contracts, shared infrastructure, and distributed systems patterns as first-class concerns.
• You have a product mindset: You connect backend work to measurable business impact and understand how experiments tie to user growth and engagement.
• You move quickly and iterate: You can scope and deliver MVPs to learn early, gather data, and iterate.
• You work well cross-functionally: You enjoy partnering closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Data Scientists.
• You’re collaborative and low ego: You evolve your thinking based on new data and contribute to a positive, inclusive team culture.

What You Will Do

• Build and ship experiments that improve monetization, host experiences, content understanding, and personalization for millions of users.
• Evolve our backend systems, balancing quick iteration with code health and scalability.
• Collaborate closely with engineers, PMs, designers, and data scientists.
• Instrument and analyze experiments to inform the next iteration.
• Advocate for simplicity, making thoughtful tradeoffs to ensure solutions are maintainable and measurable.
• Create something meaningful in the social space.