Senior Backend Engineer

Position Description:

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to architect scalable APIs, microservices, and cloud infrastructure that power our AI applications. You’ll lead backend design decisions, own system reliability and performance, and mentor junior engineers. Our stack is Python-heavy (FastAPI, asyncio) with Kubernetes orchestration on AWS. You’ll build systems that handle 50M+ API requests daily while maintaining 99.99% uptime.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement REST/gRPC APIs with Python FastAPI and Node.js/Express
• Architect microservices using Docker, Kubernetes, and service mesh (Istio/Linkerd)
• Optimize database performance across PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis caching layers
• Implement event-driven architectures using Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SQS/SNS
• Build authentication/authorization systems with JWT, OAuth2, and API gateway patterns
• Monitor system health with Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK stack; set up alerting for SLAs
• Conduct code reviews, write technical specs, and mentor 2-3 junior engineers

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of backend development experience in Python or Node.js
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, CAP theorem, and eventual consistency
• Production experience with AWS (EC2, Lambda, RDS, ElastiCache) or GCP/Azure equivalents
• Expert-level SQL skills; experience with database optimization and query tuning
• Experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes/EKS/GKE) in production
• Deep knowledge of API security (rate limiting, authentication, input validation)
• Experience designing APIs for mobile/web clients with versioning strategies
• Bachelor’s in CS or equivalent; experience at high-growth startups is a plus