Vapi

Technology

MemberofTechnicalStaff,CoreBackend

$180–265k San Francisco, California, United States FULL TIME Remote Friendly
Market Sentiment
HIGH DEMAND

Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Mid+ candidates.

The Brief

“Member of Technical Staff, Core Backend at Vapi. Skills: Real-time systems, Streaming data, Event-driven backends, Queue architecture. Own pipeline stability. Own pipeline pluggability”

What You'll Achieve.

Add new models without touching core; Add new providers without touching core; Drive measurable reliability win; Drive measurable latency win

Industry & Context.

Technology
Problems you'll solve

Debugged backpressure cascade; Troubleshoot incidents

What They're Looking For.

Must Have

Built real-time streaming systems, Debugged backpressure cascade, Experience with queue architecture, Built plugin adapter architectures, Operated Postgres at scale, Instrument with OpenTelemetry

Nice to Have

TypeScript + Node.js + NestJS

What You'll Do.

Own pipeline stability

Own pipeline pluggability

Consolidate BullMQ into Kafka

Harden provider abstractions

Instrument pipeline with tracing

Shore up Postgres SPOFs

Land pipeline improvement

Ship event-driven instrumentation

Harden provider plugin path

Drive reliability win

Pull in for design reviews

How You'll Work.

Team & Collaboration

Agents and FDE teams; Cross-functional teams

Full Job Description

Voice AI that resolves, not transfers. Most phone systems trap callers in menus and scripts. Vapi is the platform for deploying voice agents that know your business and can listen, adapt, and resolve in minutes. - The numbers: 1 billion calls. 1 million developers. 10x enterprise ARR growth - The customers: Amazon Ring, ServiceTitan, New York Life, Intuit, Kavak, and thousands more, from YC startups to the Fortune 500 - The news: a $50M Series B led by Peak XV Partners, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Y Combinator, and our earlier backers. Total raised: $72M Why We’re Hiring This Role:   The StreamModule pipeline — VAD → STT → LLM → TTS → Transport — runs on cork/uncork backpressure during live phone calls. A hundred milliseconds of delay is audible. This role owns pipeline stability and pluggability, so the agents and FDE teams can add new models and providers without touching core.   You’ll consolidate BullMQ into Kafka, harden the provider abstractions (LLM, STT, TTS base classes), instrument the pipeline with event-driven OTEL tracing, and shore up the Postgres SPOFs that contributed to the Oct 15 and Oct 22 incidents.   What You’ll Do:   30 Day: Ramp on the StreamModule pipeline and the cork/uncork backpressure model. Walk the Oct 15 / Oct 22 DB incidents and the duplicate-message incident. Land a scoped pipeline or provider-abstraction improvement.   60 Day: Own a slice of the BullMQ → Kafka consolidation. Ship event-driven OTEL instrumentation for at least one critical pipeline stage. Harden one provider plugin path so a new model can be added without core changes.   90 Day: Drive a measurable reliability or latency win on the call path. Be the backend owner that agents and FDE teams pull in for design reviews on new providers and pipeline changes.   Who You Are:   Must-haves: - You’ve built real-time or streaming systems in production — media pipelines, streaming data, or event-driven backends. You’ve debugged

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