Software Engineer jobs in California

InstaLily

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $150,000 – $190,000

This role owns features across InstaLILY's AI agent platform, shipping backend services, infrastructure, and web interfaces that run in live enterprise systems. It suits engineers who code at a high level, work comfortably with customers in the room, and have shipped real LLM-powered systems in production.

Listed on InstaLily’s careers site · Apply there ↗

PlanetScale

San Francisco, CA · $120,000 – $290,000 · Remote

PlanetScale is seeking a Software Engineer to design and build the control plane for Neki, their sharded PostgreSQL product, handling provisioning, scaling, and disaster recovery for managed database infrastructure. This role suits experienced backend engineers who have operated large-scale distributed systems and want to work on database infrastructure challenges with direct customer impact.

Listed on PlanetScale’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Sentry

San Francisco, CA · $155,000 – $400,000 · Remote

This role involves designing and maintaining the infrastructure that handles Sentry's massive time-series event data, with a focus on scaling search capabilities and storage performance. It's suited to experienced backend engineers who enjoy tackling complex distributed systems challenges and want to influence the technical direction of a large-scale data platform.

Listed on Sentry’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Suno

Full-time · Los Angeles, CA · $228,000 – $363,000

Suno is seeking experienced iOS engineers to build the core architecture and user experience of its AI music creation platform. This role offers the chance to work on a fast-growing consumer app with founding-level impact, designing fluid interfaces for real-time audio creation and social discovery features.

Listed on Suno’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Taskrabbit

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $175,000 – $225,000

Taskrabbit is seeking an engineer to embed within internal business functions and build Claude-powered agents and automations that solve real operational workflows. This role suits someone with production AI experience who can scope ambiguous problems, ship reliable systems independently, and measure impact—not a no-code builder, but a software engineer who has shipped LLM-integrated code to production.

Listed on Taskrabbit’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Copper

Full-time · Berkeley, CA · $190,000 – $228,000

Copper is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to design and maintain the cloud, mobile, and internal software systems that power their electrified home appliances and energy storage products. This role suits experienced engineers who can own large technical problems end-to-end while collaborating across hardware, manufacturing, and operations teams in a fast-moving startup.

Listed on Copper’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Labelbox

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $140,000 – $200,000

This role owns the design and operationalization of reinforcement learning training environments—the sandboxed systems where AI agents learn and interact. It's ideal for a systems-minded software engineer who understands RL fundamentals and wants to solve high-leverage infrastructure problems at the intersection of ML and DevOps.

Listed on Labelbox’s careers site · Apply there ↗

CharacterAI

Redwood City, CA · $200,000 – $300,000 · Remote

This role involves building machine learning systems and infrastructure to power discovery, recommendation, and search features for a rapidly growing AI consumer platform. You'll work cross-functionally to implement ML models, optimize data pipelines, and deploy production systems at scale.

Listed on CharacterAI’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Terran Orbital

Full-time · Irvine, CA · $150,000 – $210,000 · Remote

This role develops flight software for nano-satellites, requiring deep expertise in C++ for embedded systems and Linux kernel development. It suits experienced engineers with 8+ years (Staff) or 12+ years (Principal) in critical systems who can lead teams and mentor junior engineers on mission-critical aerospace projects.

Listed on Terran Orbital’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Zencastr

San Francisco, CA · Remote

Zencastr seeks a backend engineer to build high-performance infrastructure for their podcasting platform, working within a fully distributed startup team. This role suits someone with deep Node.js and TypeScript expertise who thrives on solving performance-critical problems at scale.

Listed on Zencastr’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Baidu

Full-time · Mountain View, CA · $159,000 – $229,000

Lead a product engineering team building AI-powered advertising infrastructure while establishing security and compliance practices as the company's CISO. This role suits experienced backend engineers who want technical leadership responsibility across both R&D systems and information security.

Listed on Baidu’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Nextdoor

San Francisco, CA

This is a general application for software engineering roles at Nextdoor, intended for candidates who didn't find a specific posted position matching their interests. It's suited for engineers interested in community-focused technology who want to express interest in any relevant opportunities the company might have.

Listed on Nextdoor’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Bend Studio

Contract · Aliso Viejo, CA

Sony is hiring a senior engineer to design and operate the server infrastructure powering their cloud gaming service across a global network. This role suits someone with deep production systems experience who enjoys solving complex distributed systems problems and wants to work on technology that delivers games to millions of players.

Listed on Bend Studio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Shield AI

Full-time · San Diego, CA · $200,000 – $300,000

Staff-level role building safety-critical autonomy software that monitors and bounds unsafe behavior in autonomous aircraft systems, ensuring safe flight within strict airworthiness standards. Best suited to experienced engineers comfortable architecting high-assurance systems, setting standards, and mentoring others in a defense-tech environment.

Listed on Shield AI’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Menlo Ventures Portfolio

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $305,000 – $385,000

This role builds the evaluation systems that test whether Claude's prompts and features work as intended across product surfaces and model launches. It combines eval infrastructure, prompt engineering support, and internal tooling to help product designers systematically test and refine AI behavior without writing code.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Crusoe

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $215,000 – $260,000

Crusoe Cloud is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the development of their Software Defined Networking infrastructure, focusing on kernel-level optimization and high-performance packet processing. This role suits experienced systems engineers who have built production networking systems and want to architect next-generation cloud networking at scale.

Listed on Crusoe’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Intuit

San Diego, CA · $188,500 – $274,000

A technical leadership role building data engineering platforms and pipelines at scale using cloud and big data technologies. This suits experienced data engineers who want to grow into staff-level responsibility while remaining hands-on, mentoring peers and shaping technology direction without people management.

Listed on Intuit’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Relativity Space

Long Beach, CA · $154,000 – $230,000

Relativity Space seeks a senior software engineer to lead the development of safety-critical flight control systems for their Terran R rocket, working across GNC integration, telemetry, and testing infrastructure. This role suits experienced systems programmers who want to architect real-time software for extreme conditions and mentor a growing team.

Listed on Relativity Space’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Anyscale

San Francisco, CA · $215,000 – $230,000

This role involves building and optimizing Ray Data, a distributed data processing engine for machine learning workloads, with a focus on performance, scalability, and fault tolerance across complex AI pipelines. It suits experienced distributed systems engineers who want to work on infrastructure that powers AI at scale.

Listed on Anyscale’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Notion

Internship · San Francisco, CA · $57 – $61 / hour · Remote

This is a summer internship at Notion where you'll write production code across their full stack, helping design AI-powered features for their collaborative workspace product. It suits computer science students with some prior internship experience who are curious about AI and want to work on a product used by millions.

Listed on Notion’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Amplitude

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $131,000 – $200,000

A product-minded engineer building features that help Amplitude customers adopt the platform more broadly, from onboarding new users to expanding usage across teams and departments. This role suits someone who enjoys owning projects end-to-end, working across the full stack, and using data to drive product decisions.

Listed on Amplitude’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Workday

Full-time · Pleasanton, CA · $176,000 – $264,000

This role leads the design and development of high-performance APIs and frameworks that enable AI agents and product teams at Workday to build scalable integrations. You'll shape API standards, mentor senior engineers, and drive technical decisions across the platform while working on mission-critical backend services.

Listed on Workday’s careers site · Apply there ↗