Senior Software Engineer

About Discernis

Discernis builds AI for legal discovery at a scale where general legal AI tools fall apart. When a litigation team needs to know what a group of people knew, and when, across millions of emails, chats, and documents, our platform finds it with the recall attorneys can stake a case on. We deploy in private cloud and fully air-gapped on-prem for AmLaw firms and corporate legal teams.

We're seed-stage and venture-funded, have paying Big Law customers, and have a pipeline of AmLaw firms and Fortune 500 companies lined up for paid pilots and future deals. Industry incumbents are coming to us to integrate. Discovery is our wedge: the bigger goal is helping enterprises understand and act on their largest, messiest datasets. We're a small team based in NYC, and you'd be joining before our next stage of growth.

How we work

We value ownership, curiosity, and shipping. We hire people who teach themselves new things, make good calls without much direction, and care about getting it right for the attorneys who depend on us. We work hard at a sustainable pace, without crunch culture or arbitrary deadlines.

The role

You'll be working closely with our Head of Engineering, responsible for shipping, planning, and code review together. This is a high-leverage engineering role. We want someone we can hand a major system to and trust completely.

What you'll do

• Own the architecture and roadmap for your area, then ship it
• Review code and set engineering standards with our Head of Engineering
• Plan sprints, scope projects, and make build-vs-buy calls
• Work directly with customers to understand what's breaking and why
• Help interview and mentor as the team grows

Our stack

• Backend: Python
• Data and search: PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, at multi-million-document scale
• Deployment: Kubernetes (K3s), private cloud, and air-gapped on-prem
• Frontend: Vue

What we're looking for

• 4+ years shipping production systems, ideally at big tech, at multiple startups, or both
• You've owned a system end to end, from design through on-call.
• You operate with very little direction and still make good calls.
• You hold strong, well-reasoned opinions on architecture and can be talked out of them.
• When you apply, please include one link to something you've built or owned.

Nice to have

• Document processing or distributed data pipelines
• On-prem or air-gapped deployment
• LLM-powered applications in production

Our process

1. A call with our founder
2. A technical deep dive with our Head of Engineering
3. An architecture session on a real problem

Why Discernis

• Real ownership in a clean codebase with solid CI and fast shipping velocity
• Direct work with the founder and with customers
• Meaningful equity with a 4-year vest and 1-year cliff
• Health insurance
• Unlimited PTO plus standard US holidays

If you need an accommodation during the hiring process, email us at [email protected].