Backend Engineer – Data Platform
Own production backend services and shared data infrastructure, from event ingestion and streaming to data modeling, orchestration, quality, and reliable access for analytics and AI.
Responsibilities
- Build and maintain production Python and Java backend services, APIs, and reactive data-processing pipelines
- Own batch and streaming pipelines for product analytics, learner insights, experimentation, and AI model training
- Design trusted data models, shared metrics, and semantic-layer business logic
- Define standards for data contracts, testing, lineage, freshness, and observability
- Develop approaches for schema evolution, backfills, replay, workload distribution, and failure recovery
- Collaborate across engineering, AI, analytics, DevOps, and product teams to deliver reusable data capabilities
Requirements
- At least 6 years of production software engineering experience, primarily in backend systems
- Strong proficiency in Python, Java, and SQL
- Experience with backend service and API design, asynchronous processing, failure handling, testing, and performance optimization
- Experience with relational and non-relational databases such as PostgreSQL, Redis, or MongoDB
- Production experience with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and observability
- Deep experience with ETL/ELT pipelines and batch or streaming data systems
- Production experience with Apache Flink and reactive pipelines using RxJava or Project Reactor
- Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems such as Kafka or AWS SQS
- Strong understanding of data modeling, warehouse and lakehouse architecture, schema evolution, and data quality
- Production experience with dbt and an analytical platform such as Snowflake, Databricks, ClickHouse, Athena, Trino, or Dremio
- Experience with Pandas, Polars, or Daft and orchestration tools such as Airflow or Dagster
- Clear communication and ownership of cross-functional technical initiatives through production
Nice to have
- Experience with Airbyte, Rivery, or AWS AppFlow
- Experience with conversational AI, speech/audio systems, or real-time communication
- Production experience with Go, Rust, Scala, or Kotlin
- Contributions to open-source infrastructure projects