Backend Engineer, LLM Application

The Opportunity

As a Backend Engineer of our LLM Application on the Nascent engineering team, you will play a key role in building, scaling, and maintaining the system that powers our LLM infrastructure. From developing backend architecture in Rust to contributing to UI components in React, you’ll be working across the stack to support high-performance, scalable applications. You’ll collaborate closely with technical leadership and contribute meaningfully to the development of systems from the ground up, helping build scalable, performant, production-level applications with regular release cycles.

You will thrive in this role if you're a self-directed learner who is excited to take ownership, move quickly, and adapt as requirements evolve. You’ve got experience with performance-sensitive systems, are comfortable with modern frontend frameworks, and bring a scrappy, startup-friendly mindset to solving complex problems. If you’re eager to level up in Rust, build at the intersection of AI and crypto, and build with a team that values curiosity, experimentation, and execution—this is the perfect role for you.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain the next phase of a world-class LLM system that is ensuring optimal performance, low-latency, reliability, and scalability. 
• Support development and implementation of a backend, microservices, Rust architecture.
• Responsible for front-end development in support of backend configuration management.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other engineering teams to support system users.
• Build and integrate custom AI agents and LLM-based tools into your daily workflows to enhance efficiency and productivity.
• Stay updated with emerging technologies, communication protocols, web standards, and best practices for data acquisition.
• Ensure resilience and stability through quality code reviews, unit, regression and user acceptance testing
• Be an integral contributor to a lean agile development team 

About you

• You thrive in less structured environments and are at your best when driving and delivering results with the freedom to build and execute your own plan.
• You are as excited by starting a project as completing, maintaining, and continually optimizing it.
• You are resourceful and can toe the line between moving fast and breaking things and moving methodically to get things right the first time.
• You are extremely agile and have a strong ability to adapt quickly to evolving requirements.

Preferred experience

• 2-5 years of full-time software engineering experience, ideally as a systems programmer (Rust, C++, GO). Bonus if you have experience with and/or interest in learning Rust. 
• Experience supporting a large project from start to finish.
• Experience with some front-end technologies (React, Angular, Vue.js)
• Experience beyond testing (e.g. quality processes, verification & validation)
• Experience building scalable, performant, production-level applications with regular release cycles
  • Performance sensitive engineering including multi-threading, streaming data, and concurrency
  • Distributed systems, microservices, relational databases
• Familiarity with Cloud platforms and IaC (Terraform and AWS)
• Experience building trading systems is a strong plus, with an interest in and enthusiasm for the crypto space. 

About Nascent…

Founded in 2020, Nascent exists to build, expand, and capture opportunity, in open markets and permissionless technologies. Building from a base of permanent capital, we deploy assets across a range of both liquid and long-term strategies that ensure we are among the most active users of the open financial system we are helping to build. We've made venture investments in 100+ early-stage teams that we believe have the potential to create substantive change, expand boundaries, and find new horizons. We are consistently on the hunt for the most competitive and curious minds exploring the edges of the crypto ecosystem and leverage our hyper flexible structure to accelerate ideas into fully deployed strategies.

Our Team & Culture

At Nascent, we are an interdisciplinary team of investors, builders & creators, capable of achieving more together than we can as individuals. We offer the opportunity to contribute to building the future global economic system with a world-class team and culture that pairs the freedom to explore, experiment & play with a competitive drive to win. We invest in our people by providing the autonomy to build, coupled with accountability & honest feedback to help learn, grow, perform & win. Our distributed team understands the value of in-person time—we host two team retreats per year and encourage team members to come together for more frequent in-person work. 

Principles that drive our team & work

• Compete to win
• Explore, experiment, play
• Always be building
• Seek and speak truth
• Own your shit.

What We Offer

At Nascent, we offer a competitive total compensation package heavily weighted toward bonus, ensuring that when we perform at our best and the firm wins we all win. 

• The opportunity to learn, experiment and build in an entrepreneurial environment
• Remote and distributed working environment
• Comprehensive health benefits package including dental, vision, and life
• 16 weeks fully paid parental leave & supported return to work
• Home office setup and stipend or coworking space and wellness stipend
• Retirement plan matching contributions 
• Open vacation policy as well as flexible work hours and location
• Team activities and bi-annual in-person team retreats 

We are an equal opportunity employer and celebrate diversity and differences of perspectives. We do not discriminate on the basis of any status, inclusive of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.