Senior Backend Engineer, AI Orchestration - Kestra

About Kestra

At Kestra, we’re on a mission to make orchestration and automation simpler for everyone. Our open-source platform helps teams manage complex workflows with confidence, and we’re already making a big impact in businesses around the world.

In March 2026, we closed a $25M Series A led by RTP Global, with participation from Alven, ISAI, and Axeleo – backed by founders from Datadog, dbt Labs, and Hugging Face.

About the Role

Kestra orchestrates workflows across systems and domains. AI agents and LLM-driven workflows are a growing part of that, and this role is about making sure they can run reliably inside the orchestrator. This is not a wrapper around a model API, but a platform orchestrating how agent steps should be run, retried, branched, and kept observable inside the orchestrator. That work happens in the Kestra core, which is written in Java.

What You Would Do

• Design and build the execution primitives for AI workflows in the Kestra engine
• Build and maintain the plugins that connect Kestra to LLM providers and agent frameworks
• Turn real agent use cases into reusable blueprints, together with the product team
• Keep AI executions observable and debuggable to the same standard as the rest of Kestra

What We Are Looking For

• A strong Java background. You have built and maintained production Java systems, not used Java in passing.
• Hands-on experience with LangChain4j or a comparable Java agent framework
• A clear mental model of how agentic systems are actually run: tool calls, state, retries, failure modes
• Comfort working close to an orchestration engine, where correctness and reliability matter more than demos

Note: This is a Java-first role. While the AI ecosystem is mostly Python, we can work with someone who has built AI systems in Python (or in TypeScript via LangChain.js) and has a solid Java background to grow from. We cannot work with someone who only knows the Python AI stack and does not want to write Java. We are also not looking for candidates whose AI experience is a single demo or a personal side project.

Our Tech Stack

• Backend: Java, Micronaut
• Frontend: Vue.js, Bootstrap
• Datastore: Kafka, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, MySQL
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform
• Cloud: GCP, AWS, Azure
• Tools: GitHub for repo management, actions, and issues

Perks & Benefits

• Work from anywhere: We’re a remote-first company with access to coworking spaces worldwide.
• Health coverage: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision support.
• Home office setup: We’ll provide all the equipment you need to work comfortably.

Our Hiring Process

We aim to move quickly (2-3 weeks):

• Intro call with the hiring manager (30 min)
• Technical test (2-hour async homework)
• Team chat with two future colleagues (30 min)
• Final discussion with a co-founder (30 min)