Bullseye search · Backend & Infrastructure Engineer
The services your product stands on need engineers who have run them under real load. I run a bullseye search for backend, infrastructure, and reliability engineers doing exactly that right now.
The short answer
Chasen Talent is a founder-led recruiting firm that finds backend and infrastructure engineers for early-stage to growth startups. Founder Chasen Nick runs every search personally as a bullseye search: one specific profile, recruited directly from teams where that work is happening now, and verified before a client ever sees them. In 2026 he has worked 8 backend & infrastructure engineer searches, with base salaries from $160K to $400K.
2026 market read, from my desk
Most requested: AWS, Python, GCP and Docker. Figures come from real searches on my desk this year. Client names stay confidential.
The target
Designed, shipped, and got paged for the systems they built.
Hands-on with queues, databases, and caches such as Kafka, Postgres, and Redis.
Deep in AWS or GCP, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
Instruments everything and fixes problems before customers notice.
Where I find them: Infrastructure and backend teams at high-scale startups, reliability engineers at companies known for uptime, and senior engineers ready to go from a big-company system to a startup's whole backend.
How a bullseye search works
We pin down the exact profile together: what they've shipped, the stack, the stage, and the dealbreakers. No keyword lists.
I map who's doing this work right now and recruit them directly with your specific role. Most of them are not applying anywhere.
I check real track record and current role before anyone reaches you, so you meet finalists, not a stack of resumes.
Every step is run by me, Chasen Nick. No handoffs to junior recruiters. How that compares to a big agency →
Questions founders ask
Across the 8 backend & infrastructure engineer searches I've worked in 2026, base salary ran from $160K to $400K, with a typical midpoint around $225K. 8 of the 8 were based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 6 were in-person roles.
Backend engineers build the product's services. Infrastructure engineers build and run what those services run on. Site reliability engineers keep all of it up and fast. Small teams often need one person who covers two of the three, and the search should say which two.
Across the searches I've worked this year, AWS, Python, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform came up most, with Redis, Kafka, and Prometheus close behind.
California, New York, and remote across the United States. Most searches on my desk right now are in-person roles in San Francisco.
Tell me about the role. If I'm not the right fit for it, I'll tell you that too.
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