Founding Senior Software Engineer (Portugal)

Clipbook

Portugal

Who this role is best for

Geared toward candidates with strong backend and AI/ML experience comfortable with building and scaling core systems. The role is based in Portugal and emphasizes rapid iteration and real-world production integration.

Best fit for

Candidates with 3+ years of production system scaling and a passion for AI/ML integration
— “3+ years building and scaling production systems”
Individuals who have worked with cloud infrastructure and distributed systems at scale
— “Design systems that scale. Build systems that will hold up as we grow 10x”
Candidates with experience in RAG pipelines and prompt execution for real-world workflows
— “Put LLMs and ML models into production for real workflows: RAG pipelines, embeddings, prompt execution”

Things to consider

The role requires a commitment to rapid iteration and quick feature deployment
— “Genuine excitement to build quickly & ship fast”
This is a founding role, likely involving high visibility and responsibility
— “You'd be a key contributor at Clipbook”

How to stand out

Highlight experience with high-concurrency systems and cloud platforms in your resume
— “Experience with cloud infrastructure, containerization, and CI/CD”
Showcase your ability to make architectural decisions and own feature development end-to-end
— “Architect & build core systems. Drive key decisions across our stack and own feature development end-to-end.”
Emphasize your hands-on production experience with LLMs and ML models
— “Put LLMs and ML models into production for real workflows”

Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

Developing core systems
Integrating AI into workflows

Typical background

Experience in backend developmentExperience with cloud platforms

Skills & requirements

Required

Backend DevelopmentDistributed SystemsAI IntegrationAPI DevelopmentCloud InfrastructureContainerizationCI/CD

Preferred

Data EngineeringMachine Learning

Stack & domain

LlmsML ModelsRAG PipelinesEmbeddingsPrompt ExecutionAgentic SystemsFine-tuned ModelsCloud InfrastructureContainerizationCI/CDAWSGCPDockerKubernetesCi/cd PipelinesSparkKafkaFlinkBigQueryStreaming PipelinesETLDistributed SystemsHigh-volume ScalingFault ToleranceEventual ConsistencyPythonTypeScriptPostgreSQLHigh-concurrency SystemsCommunicationNewsTVPodcastSocial MediaInternet DataTextAudioVideoReal-time

About the role

Original posting from Clipbook via Ashby

ABOUT CLIPBOOK
Clipbook’s mission: reinvent how leaders listen to and engage with the world of information that comes out every day.
Our platform ingests, comprehends, summarizes, and surfaces insights and actions from traditional news, TV, podcast, social media, and internet data at scale—across text, audio, and video in real time.
We launched in 2023 and have grown to 200+ clients including BCG, Weber Shandwick, and dozens of government agencies. We bootstrapped to seven-figures in ARR before raising a $3.3M seed round (co-led by Mark Cuban and a host of prominent angels and VCs).
Our founding team has backgrounds at BCG, Bain, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, the White House, and Congress, and has previously built startups backed by Sequoia, Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Coatue, and NFX.
THE ROLE
You'd be a key contributor at Clipbook — joining a small but mighty engineering team with engineers from Meta, Stripe, and AWS. You'll have the opportunity to develop new features and capabilities, and what you build will ship to 200+ customers quickly.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Architect & build core systems. Drive key decisions across our stack and own feature development end-to-end.
Integrate AI into real-world workflows. Put LLMs and ML models into production for real workflows: RAG pipelines, embeddings, prompt execution, agentic systems, fine-tuned models.
Design systems that scale. Build systems that will hold up as we grow 10x, while being practical about what to invest in now vs. what can wait.
Develop performant APIs and services. Create robust interfaces and internal services that power our product end-to-end, ensuring reliability, security, and a seamless experience for customers.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
3+ years building and scaling production systems. Strong across backend fundamentals (services, data models, distributed systems), with deeper expertise in one or more areas — and a desire to keep expanding your breadth over time.
Genuine excitement to build quickly & ship fast. We care about getting things into users' hands and iterating from there.
Experience with cloud infrastructure, containerization, and CI/CD. Familiarity with AWS/GCP, containerization (Docker/K8s), and CI/CD pipelines.
Excellent communication skills
TECHNICAL AREAS WHERE DEPTH MATTERS (ONE OR MORE)
Data Engineering: Spark, Kafka, Flink, BigQuery, streaming pipelines, ETL at scale.
Distributed Systems: High-volume scaling, fault tolerance, eventual consistency.
AI/ML: LLMs in production, RAG, embeddings, fine-tuning, inference optimization.
Backend: Python, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, high-concurrency systems.

Source: Clipbook careers (Ashby)