Senior SWE (Search) - Billing

About Tavily 

We're building the infrastructure layer for agentic web interaction at scale. Our API is designed from the ground up to power Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and real-time reasoning in AI systems. By connecting LLMs to high-quality, trustworthy web content, we help developers build agents that are not only intelligent — but also informed. 

We work with some of the most innovative teams in AI — from small startups shaping the ecosystem to the largest enterprises deploying AI at scale. Whether it's powering sales assistants, research copilots, or internal knowledge tools, we're the missing link between LLMs and the real world. 

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to design and build the billing platform behind a novel search engine tailored for agentic AI consumption. This role is based in our New York office, hybrid with the NYC team.

Our APIs are used by millions of developers and the AI agents acting on their behalf, all paying based on what they consume. You will own the systems that turn product usage into accurate, trustworthy revenue, supporting flexible billing models—usage-based pricing, subscriptions, prepaid balances with auto top-up, and enterprise contracts. Correctness is non-negotiable: every event must be measured precisely and every invoice must be right to the cent.

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In this position, your responsibility will be to:

• Design and operate the billing platform end to end, from usage events to invoices

• Build metering and usage-aggregation pipelines that turn high-volume events into billable amounts

• Design and operate prepaid credit/wallet systems with auto top-up and balance management

• Support enterprise/contract billing with custom pricing, negotiated terms, and scheduled invoicing

• Build reconciliation, idempotency, and invoice-accuracy safeguards to ensure revenue data is always correct

• Lead the migration to the next generation of our billing system with no revenue loss or downtime

• Define observability and quality metrics for billing correctness, freshness, and throughput

• Ensure billing systems meet audit and compliance requirements (SOX, financial audit)

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What we're looking for:

• 6+ years building production backend systems, of which 3+ years actively building and operating billing or metering systems in production

• Hands-on experience with usage-based / metered billing: rating, aggregation, and proration logic

• Hands-on experience with subscription / recurring billing alongside usage-based models

• Hands-on experience with prepaid credits / wallet systems and auto top-up mechanics

• Hands-on experience with enterprise / contract billing: custom pricing and negotiated terms

• End-to-end integration of a third-party billing platform (Stripe Billing, Metronome, Orb, or Zuora)

• Strong expertise in Python and TypeScript/Node (Go a plus)

• Production experience with transactional databases (Postgres or equivalent) for financial-grade data

• Built high-volume event / usage pipelines into a data warehouse (Kafka or Kinesis → Snowflake or BigQuery)

• Owned billing correctness in production: reconciliation, idempotency, invoice accuracy

• Product-Led Growth (PLG) experience: worked on billing for high-volume, self-serve users

• Hands-on with Auth0, Okta, or similar identity systems in production

• Shipped revenue systems under SOX or financial audit constraints

Nice to have:

• Led a billing system migration or re-platform with zero revenue loss or downtime

• Built hybrid billing combining usage, subscriptions, and prepaid in one system

• Worked across both a payments layer (Stripe) and a metering / rating layer (Metronome / Orb)

• Billed a developer-facing / API product with pay-as-you-go and API-key metering

• Used Snowflake for usage aggregation and revenue analytics

Why Tavily? 

• Full ownership — small team, you own the entire infrastructure, not a slice of it 

• Real scaling challenges — bursty scraping workloads, cache invalidation, multi-region, millions of daily requests 

• AI-native company — your infra directly powers AI agents used by leading companies in the space. 

Key employee benefits in the US: 

• Health insurance: 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and families. 

• 401(k) plan: Up to 4% company match with immediate vesting. 

• Parental leave: 20 weeks paid for primary caregivers, 12 weeks for secondary caregivers. 

• Remote work reimbursement: Up to $85/month for mobile and internet. 

• Disability & life insurance: Company-paid short-term, long-term and life insurance coverage. 

Pay Transparency

We offer competitive compensation and benefits packages. Actual compensation will be determined based on job-related factors, including experience, skills, qualifications, the level at which the candidate is hired, and geographic location, consistent with applicable law.