Sr Platform Engineer - Backend

Location: USA CA San Jose 300 Santana Row

Overview

Baker Tilly is a leading advisory, tax and assurance firm, providing clients with a genuine coast-to-coast and global advantage in major regions of the U.S. and in many of the world’s leading financial centers – New York, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston. Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and Baker Tilly US, LLP (Baker Tilly) provide professional services through an alternative practice structure in accordance with the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and applicable laws, regulations and professional standards.

Baker Tilly US, LLP is a licensed independent CPA firm that provides attest services to its clients. Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and its subsidiary entities provide tax and business advisory services to their clients. Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and its subsidiary entities are not licensed CPA firms.

Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and Baker Tilly US, LLP, trading as Baker Tilly, are independent members of Baker Tilly International, a worldwide network of independent accounting and business advisory firms in 141 territories, with 43,000 professionals and a combined worldwide revenue of $5.2 billion. Visit bakertilly.com or join the conversation on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

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Baker Tilly is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability or protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected basis, in accordance with applicable federal, state or local law.

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Baker Tilly is seeking a SrPlatform Engineer — Backend to join the founding team of the firm's AI Product Group (APG), supporting the development and operation of shared platform services that power AI applications and intelligent agents across the organization. This hands-on engineering role is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining scalable, secure, and reliable backend services, APIs, runtime components, and integration capabilities that support both internally developed and third-party AI solutions.

The position plays a critical role in establishing foundational platform capabilities, including identity and access management, enterprise data connectivity, telemetry, and production infrastructure, while ensuring solutions are flexible, maintainable, and aligned with enterprise technology standards.

As an early member of the AI Product Group, this individual will collaborate closely with platform leadership, enterprise architects, AI engineers, data platform teams, and globally distributed technical teams to develop production-ready services that enable the firm's expanding AI ecosystem. The role emphasizes strong backend engineering fundamentals, hands-on development, security, evaluation-driven engineering, and end-to-end ownership of production systems.

The ideal candidate brings demonstrated experience building and operating shared services, implementing authentication and authorization capabilities, and delivering reliable cloud-based solutions. Prior experience with AI, large language models, or agentic systems is not required; success in this role depends on sound technical judgment, strong problem-solving abilities, and the capacity to quickly learn and apply emerging technologies.

Responsibilities

Design and Build Shared Platform Services: Develop, implement, and maintain scalable backend services, APIs, and runtime components that support AI agents, enterprise applications, and shared platform capabilities.

Implement Identity and Access Management: Build secure authentication, authorization, and entitlement capabilities for users, AI agents, delegated agent activities, and autonomous processes, ensuring appropriate access controls and accountability.

Develop Secure Data Access and Integration Interfaces: Build and maintain APIs, service interfaces, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoints that enable AI agents to securely discover, retrieve, and interact with governed enterprise data.

Support Flexible and Scalable Platform Architecture: Design reusable services and stable interfaces that enable the firm to integrate, evaluate, and replace AI models, tools, and third-party technologies without disrupting core platform operations.

Develop Event-Driven and Telemetry Capabilities: Implement event-based interfaces, logging, tracing, and telemetry pipelines that capture AI agent activity, decisions, and operational data to support monitoring, evaluation, and continuous improvement.

Enable Evaluation-Based Development and Release Readiness: Partner with AI Engineering to integrate automated evaluations, testing frameworks, and performance baselines into development and deployment processes, ensuring solutions meet established quality and production standards.

Drive Platform Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Prototype, test, and evaluate emerging platform capabilities, using measurable results to determine which solutions should be developed into scalable shared services.

Own Production Deployment and Reliability: Build, deploy, monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain production services, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, and operational support to ensure reliable system performance.

Establish Engineering Standards and Reusable Components: Contribute to platform architecture, technical documentation, shared development patterns, code reviews, and engineering best practices that support consistent and maintainable solutions.

Support Knowledge Transfer and Technical Ownership: Collaborate with external engineering partners to transition platform capabilities into internally owned, documented, and maintainable production environments, including the development of reusable code, tests, and operational runbooks.

Collaborate Across Global Engineering Teams: Work closely with AI Engineering, Data & AI Platform, enterprise architecture, security, integration engineering, and engineering teams in India to align technical solutions with organizational standards and business objectives.

Support Strategic Initiatives: Participate in special projects and perform other duties as assigned to advance the firm's AI platform capabilities and business priorities.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.

3 years of hands-on backend or platform software engineering experience, including demonstrated success designing, developing, and operating production services used by other engineering teams.

Required experience independently building, deploying, and operating shared backend services that other engineers or applications depend on in production, including ownership of the associated build and deployment pipelines.

Required hands-on experience implementing authentication, authorization, or entitlement capabilities within production applications or services.

Deep proficiency in at least one mainstream programming language, such as Python, TypeScript, Go, or Java, with demonstrated understanding of language fundamentals, design patterns, and production-quality development practices.

Ability to quickly learn and apply new programming languages, frameworks, and technologies; familiarity with Python and TypeScript preferred.

Strong experience with backend service development, RESTful APIs, service integration, secure application design, and distributed systems fundamentals.

Experience working with relational databases, such as PostgreSQL or comparable technologies, including data modeling, querying, and integration with backend services.

Hands-on experience with containers, cloud infrastructure, automated build processes, and CI/CD pipelines supporting production applications.

Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, automated testing, debugging, code reviews, performance optimization, and development of reliable, maintainable services.

Demonstrated ability to evaluate technical solutions through measurable outcomes, including automated tests, benchmarks, experiments, performance metrics, or comparative evaluations.

Experience with event-driven architectures, messaging systems, streaming technologies, or asynchronous processing preferred.

Familiarity with observability, monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing technologies, such as OpenTelemetry or comparable frameworks, preferred.

Experience with cloud platforms, preferably Microsoft Azure, and associated infrastructure, deployment, and security services preferred.

Additional experience with enterprise identity and access management, entitlement systems, or secure service-to-service communication preferred.

Familiarity with telemetry pipelines, operational data integration, or evaluation-based release processes preferred.

Strong analytical thinking, technical judgment, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to evaluate architectural trade-offs, prioritize practical solutions, and avoid unnecessary technical complexity.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document technical solutions, explain engineering decisions, and collaborate effectively with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

Demonstrated ability to work independently, manage competing priorities, and deliver high-quality solutions in a fast-paced, evolving environment.

Ability to collaborate effectively with globally distributed engineering teams, external technology partners, and cross-functional stakeholders.

Experience using AI-assisted and agentic development tools to improve engineering productivity, or a strong willingness to incorporate these technologies into daily development practices.

Prior experience with AI, large language models, or agentic systems is not required; strong backend engineering fundamentals and the ability to learn emerging technologies are essential.

No professional certifications or licenses required.

The pay rate range for this job position are listed below. Actual compensation is influenced by a variety of relevant factors including but not limited to applicant’s skills, prior experience, qualifications, degrees, professional certifications, work arrangements and geographic location. Baker Tilly offers a comprehensive compensation and benefits package to eligible employees.

The national pay rate range is $150,000–$225,000

In California: pay rate range is $150,000–$225,000

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Additional Locations: USA CA Pasadena, USA CA Redwood City, USA CA Los Angeles 11150 Santa Monica Blvd, USA CA San Francisco 333 Bush St, USA CA San Diego 4747 Executive Dr, USA CA Santa Clara, USA CA Woodland Hills 6320 Canoga Ave, USA OR Portland, USA CA Walnut Creek 1333 N California Blvd, USA CA Irvine 2050 Main St, USA WA Seattle 999 Third Ave