Backend AI Developer (Smart Home & Agentic Systems)

Job Title

Backend AI Developer (Smart Home & Agentic Systems)

About the Client

Our client is a Dubai-based real estate developer building technology-led, future-ready living environments. They combine design, advanced engineering and intelligent systems to create smarter homes and communities. Innovation, local-first AI and data-driven living sit at the core of how they build. They are now establishing a specialist engineering team to bring agentic intelligence into the physical home.

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly skilled and innovative Backend AI Developer to lead the design, development and orchestration of our next-generation agentic smart home platform. In this role, you will bridge the gap between physical smart home hardware, modern local data lakes, and cutting-edge local and cloud AI models. You will be responsible for creating autonomous, context-aware digital twins and agentic assistants that make spaces truly intelligent.

If you are passionate about local-first AI, edge computing, smart home automation, and rapid prototyping workflows using modern AI-augmented coding tools, this role is designed for you.

Technical Stack & Ecosystem

• AI & Agents: OpenClaw, Nous Hermes (LLMs), ElevenLabs (voice synthesis), vision frameworks (OpenCV, Vision LLMs), Claude, Cursor, Ollama, LMStudio, OpenCode
• Smart Home: Home Assistant (custom integrations, Assist pipeline, WebSocket APIs, AppDaemon)
• Languages: Python (core backend), React JS (dashboard and control interfaces), TypeScript
• Data Engineering: DuckDB, Apache Parquet (local analytical data lakes)
• Infrastructure: Docker, Proxmox VE (LXC, VM provisioning, GPU passthrough), Linux systems

Key Responsibilities

1. AI & Agentic Orchestration

• Design, deploy and refine multi-agent systems using frameworks like OpenClaw and open-source models like Hermes, running locally via Ollama or LMStudio.
• Integrate multi-modal vision frameworks (e.g., OpenCV, vision-capable LLMs) to process security cameras, identify contextual events and generate real-time situational awareness.
• Implement lifelike, low-latency conversational voice interfaces using ElevenLabs APIs and streaming audio pipelines.
• Leverage AI-assisted coding tools like Cursor and Claude to accelerate engineering velocity and maintain high-quality code.

2. Smart Home Automation & Integration

• Build deep integrations and custom components for Home Assistant to orchestrate sensors, switches, climate control and media devices.
• Extend Home Assistant’s native Assist pipeline, or develop standalone custom agents that interact natively with the home’s state.
• Work with real-time communication protocols, including MQTT, WebSockets and HTTP REST APIs.

3. Local Data Lake & Engineering

• Architect a local, high-performance data lake using DuckDB and Parquet to ingest, store and analyze thousands of sensor data points and telemetry events.
• Implement analysis pipelines to detect anomalies, optimize energy usage and predict environmental and behavioral trends.
• Create vector databases and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) indices to feed local, home-specific context directly into agent memory.

4. Infrastructure & DevOps

• Manage a self-hosted server environment virtualized under Proxmox VE, utilizing LXC containers and VMs.
• Containerize applications using Docker and manage multi-container orchestration.
• Configure hardware passthrough (e.g., GPU passthrough for local LLM inference, Coral USB TPU for vision processing).

5. Frontend & UI Support

• Develop clean, high-performance, responsive custom dashboards and configuration portals in React JS to visualize agent states, telemetry and system controls.

Requirements

Required Experience & Skills

• Experience: 3+ years of professional software development experience, with a heavy focus on AI integration, backend architecture and/or IoT.
• Agentic System Expertise: Proven track record of building autonomous systems (multi-agent orchestration, tool-use/function-calling, RAG and memory management).
• Core Languages: Deep expertise in Python (asyncio, FastAPI, Pydantic) and comfort with React JS for building functional user interfaces.
• Infrastructure Mindset: Strong competency in self-hosting, Linux administration and virtualization using Docker and Proxmox VE.
• Data Savvy: Experience working with modern analytical file formats (Parquet) and databases (DuckDB) for high-performance data processing.
• AI Tooling Fluent: Active user of AI-augmented development environments (Cursor, Claude, OpenCode tools) to maximize engineering velocity.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications

• Active contributions to open-source projects, particularly in the Home Assistant, Ollama, OpenClaw or agentic AI ecosystems.
• Hands-on experience with hardware protocols: Zigbee, Z-Wave, ESPHome, or custom PCB/microcontroller programming.
• Advanced knowledge of edge AI deployment, quantization and local model tuning.

Why Join Us

• State-of-the-Art Work: Work at the cutting edge of local-first AI and agentic systems.
• Ownership: Complete autonomy over the software and hardware stack.
• Innovation-First: A culture that encourages experimentation, self-hosting and pushing the boundaries of what home intelligence means.

Benefits

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive Tax-Free Salary: A market-leading monthly package in AED, commensurate with experience.
• Performance Incentives: Rewards linked to quality and delivery outcomes, subject to Company Internal Policy.
• Visa & Medical Insurance: Full UAE visa sponsorship and comprehensive health cover.
• Paid Leave: As per Company Internal Policy and UAE Labour Law.
• Annual Flight Ticket & End-of-Service Gratuity: As per UAE market practice and Labour Law.
• Top-Tier Tooling: Modern hardware, local GPU infrastructure and AI-augmented development tools.
• Learning & Career Growth: Certification and conference support, with a clear path to leadership.
• Autonomy & Impact: Own the platform from the ground up and shape how AI is deployed in the physical home.