We9re hiring a Staff Backend Engineer on our Core team to design, build, and own the backend systems and APIs that power our platform. This is a senior individual contributor role with a Principal trajectory, meaning real architectural ownership, not implementation of someone else9s decisions.
The right candidate thinks in systems and consequences. You9ve owned backend platforms where the data was genuinely sensitive, you9ve made architectural decisions you had to live with, and you9re comfortable saying 44we should not do this44 when necessary. You write Python continuously and recently, you know AWS deeply, and you have strong opinions about reliability earned through experience.
What You9ll Do
- Design, build, and own production-grade REST APIs and backend services.
- Architect and maintain scalable, secure backend systems with clear ownership of trade-off decisions and long-term maintainability.
- Ensure high performance and responsiveness of applications across the platform.
- Collaborate with front-end developers and cross-functional teams to integrate user-facing elements with server-side logic.
- Mentor engineers and contribute to engineering standards, documentation, and architectural direction in a collaborative, low-ego environment.
- Troubleshoot and resolve production issues as they arise.
- Partner with Product, Security, and Data teams to translate ambiguous requirements into durable backend platforms.
- Make principled decisions about when architectural approaches are inappropriate, particularly in security- or compliance-sensitive areas.
Requirements
- Proven experience designing, building, and owning production-grade REST APIs at scale.
- Hands-on production experience with core AWS services including ECS, RDS, Lambda, S3, SQS, and IAM.
- Demonstrated ability to make and own architectural decisions on production backend systems, including trade-off analysis and long-term maintainability.
- Proficient with recent, continuous production experience using Python as a primary language (not occasional scripting or secondary usage).
- Proficient in working with SQL databases in production environments.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and tools including GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or equivalent, with hands-on ownership of pipeline configuration and deployment automation.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and contributing to engineering standards, documentation, or architectural direction.
- Experience and willingness to learn and adapt to AI prompt engineering.
- U.S. residency required
- Advanced proficiency in English
- This role requires advanced proficiency in English to effectively communicate complex information with team members and stakeholders, and to complete job-related documentation and collaboration tasks. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations where applicable.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience building and deploying production APIs with FastAPI.
- Experience with Kubernetes for container orchestration.
- Production experience with PostgreSQL including schema design, query optimization, and migrations.
- Experience building systems that handle sensitive or regulated data, such as PII, PHI, or data subject to compliance frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, or SOC2.
- Experience and flexibility using IDEs like PyCharm and VS Code with AI integration.
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