Senior Backend & AI Systems Engineer

About the job The Role PermitNav is building the platform that validates and submits complete municipal permit application packages forms, drawings, and fees together. Our long-term roadmap runs directly at the municipal back office. We need an architect who deeply understands how enterprise government workflow systems are actually structured approvals, routing, records management, audit trails, fee schedules, integrations and can design PermitNav's back-office architecture so our AI layer has something rigorous to act on. This is not an AI research role. We have already established our AI architecture philosophy in-house: deterministic extraction for all numeric facts, rules stored as configuration data (never hardcoded), and every automated check gated into pass/flag/needs-review no false green lights, advisory framing always. The developer's job is to bring the same rigor to workflow, records, and integration design, and to work fluently with agentic AI rather than around it. What You'll Do Design, build, and maintain backend services and manage our databases (schema design, performance, reliability, migrations) Build and improve our AI vision pipeline for reading and extracting data from documents, and manage geographic/spatial data (routing, mapping, GIS datasets) Implement and integrate LLM-powered features prompt design, retrieval, evaluation, and production deployment Lead application and systems design: architecture decisions, service boundaries, scalability, and security Build and maintain payment gateway integrations (e.g., Stripe) including billing, subscriptions, and transaction reliability Deliver enterprise-quality software: multi-tenant access controls, audit logging, uptime, and data integrity our customers can depend on What We're Looking For 4+ years building production backend systems (Node.js, Python) Strong relational database skills (PostgreSQL preferred); experience with geospatial data (PostGIS, mapping APIs) a strong plus Hands-on experience shipping AI/ML features to production computer vision/OCR and/or LLM integration (OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source models) Solid systems design fundamentals: APIs, queues, caching, observability Experience integrating payment processing and handling sensitive financial data Experience building or selling into enterprise software environments (SSO, compliance, SLAs) Self-directed and comfortable in a small team where you'll wear multiple hats Nice to Have Municipal/government, permitting, or regulatory-compliance domain experience Experience with enterprise workflow or records systems (case management, ERP, or GovTech platforms like Accela, Tyler, Cloudpermit) Experience with document-understanding pipelines (OCR, layout parsing, vision models) Why Join High ownership: you'll shape the architecture, not inherit it Direct impact on a real industry problem with paying customers Remote-first, flexible hours Competitive salary How to Apply Contact through linkedin!