Senior Backend Engineer

Position Overview

Our Client is seeking a high-impact Senior Backend Engineer to architect, scale, and optimize the distributed core services powering our cyber threat-intelligence platform. In this role, you will collaborate on backend modernization efforts—focusing on high availability, database scaling, high-throughput data processing, and low-latency API design. They value engineers who effectively leverage AI-assisted development tools to drive productivity and gain a competitive edge, while maintaining an uncompromising standard for engineering craftsmanship. Working in a fast-paced environment, you will collaborate with platform, front-end, and product teams to build resilient backend architecture that handles complex security workloads seamlessly.

The team is fully remote, working primarily close to the US Eastern time zone.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect, scale, and maintain high-throughput backend services and low-latency REST/gRPC APIs
• Collaborate with platform and front-end engineers to ensure seamless data flow and API integration
• Participate in system design reviews, distributed systems architecture planning, performance optimization, and rigorous and constructive code reviews to maintain high code quality and security across production systems
• Optimize database queries, indexing, and caching strategies for PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and event-driven messaging queues at scale
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code following engineering best practices and standards
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, containerization efforts, and back-end service deployment automation
• Maintain technical documentation and operational runbooks
• Mentor junior engineers and establish back-end development best practices

Tech Stack

• Frameworks: FastAPI, Django (Python)
• Languages: JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes, GCP
• Observability: Grafana, Google Analytics
• Data Technologies: PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, RedPanda(Kafka)

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional experience in backend development
• Strong proficiency in Python required, experience with Go/Rust a bonus
• Critical thinking skills and a strong desire to learn
• Effective communication skills including working with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience designing and maintaining scalable REST APIs and related backend services
• Deep experience with relational and non-relational database optimization, query tuning, and data partitioning at scale
• Comfortable working in containerized, cloud-native environments (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Proven expertise in distributed systems design, asynchronous processing, message queues, and high-availability patterns
• Ability to write comprehensive unit and integration tests
• Experience establishing development best practices
• Experience mentoring junior engineers
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment
• In-depth familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and modern SCM tools (e.g. Git)
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools to accelerate output while maintaining deep understanding, ownership, and craftsmanship over all written code

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with FastAPI, Django, Quart, Flask, or other Python web frameworks
• Experience with microservices architecture and service mesh technologies
• Experience with Elasticsearch and data at scale
• Experience with cybersecurity platforms or threat intelligence systems
• Contributions to open-source projects are a plus
• Previous technology startup experience preferred
• Cybersecurity experience is a bonus