Senior / Lead Backend Engineer
The Senior/Lead Backend Engineer will architect and build scalable, low-latency Java services, APIs, and infrastructure supporting millions of users. The role requires 5+ years of backend experience, distributed-systems expertise, database performance knowledge, and strong technical leadership.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Architect and build highly scalable, low-latency backend systems.
- Design critical APIs and evolve backend infrastructure.
- Build real-time communications, storage, ML-based feed, and social-feature systems serving millions of users.
- Drive technical decisions with product, infrastructure, and data teams.
- Mentor other engineers and lead cross-team projects.
Requirements
- 5+ years of backend engineering experience, including significant production experience.
- Strong proficiency in Java and hands-on experience building scalable microservices.
- Deep understanding of RESTful API design and distributed systems.
- Experience with MySQL or PostgreSQL, including performance tuning and schema design.
- Experience building systems handling thousands of requests per second.
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, preferably Google Cloud or AWS.
- Experience with CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
- Strong understanding of system design, architectural patterns, and security best practices.
- Strong communication and leadership skills.
Nice-to-haves
- Redis, RabbitMQ, or other message brokers and caching systems.
- SRE, DevOps, or DevSecOps experience.
Technology Stack
- Java, Redis, RabbitMQ, and Kubernetes for backend systems.
- Terraform, Salt, GitHub Actions, and CircleCI for infrastructure as code and CI/CD.
- Electron, React, Redux, and Styled Components.
- C# and C++ for native Windows recording.
- Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android.
Skills
Java, Microservices, REST APIs, Distributed Systems, MySQL, Postgres, GCP, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Redis, RabbitMQ, CI/CD, Infrastructure As Code, System Design
Similar jobs
Backend Engineering jobsSenior software engineer building core platform components, developer tools, and reliability capabilities that improve engineering productivity. Requires 4+ years of software engineering experience, cloud or platform exposure, and strong knowledge of databases, distributed systems, observability, and production reliability.
Build and optimize high-performance, real-time speech, audio, video, and WebRTC infrastructure for conversational AI across mobile and web platforms. The role requires professional C or C++ experience, concurrent systems knowledge, and at least three years of software engineering experience.
Build and operate reliable, scalable backend services and infrastructure for Duolingo’s advertising business. The role requires strong backend fundamentals, systems thinking, programming experience in Java, Python, or Kotlin, and a bachelor’s degree in a technical field.
Build and operate reliable, scalable backend services or infrastructure for Duolingo products, owning complex projects from design through production. The role requires strong backend fundamentals, a bachelor’s degree, and experience with Java, Python, or Kotlin and database technologies.
Senior software engineer responsible for revenue-critical backend systems spanning account lifecycle management, metering, billing, integrations, and customer-facing usage transparency. The role requires strong distributed-systems experience, Go or comparable backend expertise, and operational ownership.