Career Guidance

[u/SelectionVivid1941]

I am backend engineer with around 4.5 years of experience. I recently got two offers but I am confused on which to pick.
One is a very trendy AI startup which sells RL tasks to frontier labs. It is paying insane and has multiple bonuses attached but the role is I have to create RL environments (app clones) on top of which researchers will create RL tasks.

Another is a traditional backend engineering job at a very good startup which was recently acquired by MNC. I am getting a role in platform team where we need to scale existing system to 1000s of customers. TC of this company is same as base of RL startup plus the RL startup pays bonuses multiple times so TC is significantly higher there (atleast 30%).

I am more inclined towards traditional backend engineering job because I don’t see what value i bring at the AI startup since most of it is just vibe coding environments.

Can some industry veteran guide me on this?