# Founding Agentic Backend Engineer (Senior / Staff) at Variant

- Company: Variant (YC F24)
- What the company does: Creative intelligence. Backed by Y Combinator and a16z speedrun.
- Company website: https://variant.com
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Senior
- Location: San Francisco, CA, US
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $180K to $235K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2025-05-01
- Apply by: 2026-10-08
- Apply: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/variant/jobs/23RX4ZO-founding-agentic-backend-engineer-senior-staff
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/variant-founding-agentic-backend-engineer-senior-staff/

## About the role

Variant is code generation with creativity and taste. Instead of a confined conversation, you can generate endless designs from a single idea. Freely explore, discover directions you wouldn’t have thought of, and build better software as a result. We've kept our team small by design. Your code will matter from day one, and its impact will compound over time. This will be the most meaningful work of your career .

## What they're looking for

- At least one of:
- Majorly contributed to a notable open source project
- Has a seriously impressive portfolio
- Has experience building agentic applications with sophisticated harnesses and orchestration
- Has built the backend for an app that manages complex project state
- Knows that building a startup is really hard work and is fully committed

Tags: Engineering