Y Combinator-backed startup Channel3 is hiring a Backend Engineer to build a universal product database. The role involves structuring the world's messy product data using AI models, computer vision, and multimodal systems. The company has indexed over 100 million products and serves 1,500+ developers via its API.

The startup's vision is to power agentic commerce, where AI agents transact on behalf of users. Co-founders Alexander Schiff and George Lawrence argue that reliable product data is the critical bottleneck for this new channel. They've raised a $6M seed round from Matrix, Ludlow, and YC.

Candidates will work on parsing diverse product pages, deduplicating items, and building a sub-two-second search engine. The team emphasizes cost engineering, given their heavy token usage across GCP and Azure. The position is based in New York and requires US work authorization, as the company does not sponsor visas.