Backend Lead

As a Lead Backend Engineer with over 10 years of experience, you will be responsible for owning the backend architecture and system design while remaining hands-on. Your main tasks will include designing, building, and evolving distributed backend systems, defining architectural standards, and guiding teams through complex technical decisions. Core Responsibilities: - System Design / Architecture: - Design end-to-end backend systems focusing on scalability, resilience, and maintainability. - Define service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns. - Select and apply appropriate architecture patterns like Modular monoliths, Microservices, Event-driven systems, Layered, and hexagonal architectures. - Drive trade-off decisions between performance, cost, and complexity. - Produce architecture diagrams, ADRs, Data Flow Diagrams, and technical design documents. - Backend Engineering: - Design and develop high-performance backend services using Python and FastAPI. - Build and maintain RESTful APIs and async services. - Handle concurrency, background processing, and IO-heavy workloads. - Enforce clean code, SOLID principles, and testability. - Lead code reviews focusing on correctness, performance, and long-term design. - Data Engineering: - Design and optimize schemas in RDBMS (PostgreSQL/MySQL) including indexing, query optimization, transactions, and isolation levels. - Design data models for NoSQL systems (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, etc.). - Choose the right data store based on access patterns and consistency needs. - Handle migrations, versioning, and backward compatibility. - Distributed Systems: - Design systems that handle partial failures, retries, timeouts, and idempotency. - Experience with message brokers and async communication (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.). - Understand consistency models, eventual consistency, and data replication. - DevOps / Cloud: - Work in cloud environments (AWS / Azure / GCP). - Containerize services using Docker. - Deploy using CI/CD pipelines. - Understand Kubernetes concepts (pods, services, autoscaling) or managed alternatives. - Collaborate with DevOps/SRE on observability, logging, and monitoring. Required Qualifications: - Must have: - 10+ years of backend/software engineering experience. - 3+ years of production experience with FastAPI. - Expert-level Python knowledge. - Strong experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL) and at least one NoSQL datastore. - Deep understanding of backend architecture patterns, design patterns (GoF, SOLID, DDD concepts), and distributed systems fundamentals. Additional qualifications: - Experience designing and evolving large-scale systems. - Practical experience with cloud services and deployments. - Proven ability to lead technical decisions and architecture discussions. - Experience migrating monoliths to microservices (or deciding not to). - Event-driven or streaming systems experience. - API gateways, rate limiting, auth systems (OAuth2 JWT). - Prior experience acting as Senior Backend Developer, Tech Lead, or Solution Architect. As a Lead Backend Engineer, you will play a crucial role in the technical ownership of backend systems, mentor senior and mid-level engineers, set engineering standards, and work closely with product and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical designs. As a Lead Backend Engineer with over 10 years of experience, you will be responsible for owning the backend architecture and system design while remaining hands-on. Your main tasks will include designing, building, and evolving distributed backend systems, defining architectural standards, and guiding teams through complex technical decisions. Core Responsibilities: - System Design / Architecture: - Design end-to-end backend systems focusing on scalability, resilience, and maintainability. - Define service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns. - Select and apply appropriate architecture patterns like Modular monoliths, Microservices, Event-driven systems, Layered, and hexagonal architectures. - Drive trade-off decisions between performance, cost, and complexity. - Produce architecture diagrams, ADRs, Data Flow Diagrams, and technical design documents. - Backend Engineering: - Design and develop high-performance backend services using Python and FastAPI. - Build and maintain RESTful APIs and async services. - Handle concurrency, background processing, and IO-heavy workloads. - Enforce clean code, SOLID principles, and testability. - Lead code reviews focusing on correctness, performance, and long-term design. - Data Engineering: - Design and optimize schemas in RDBMS (PostgreSQL/MySQL) including indexing, query optimization, transactions, and isolation levels. - Design data models for NoSQL systems (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, etc.). - Choose the right data s