Backend Engineer

We’re looking for a Backend Developer who can design, build, and run reliable backend services from day one. You’ll work directly with the founders, move fast, and take end-to-end ownership—from schema design to deployment and on-call. This role suits someone ready to invest significant time/effort in an early build phase for outsized impact (and sizeable equity). Opportunity to work with IIT/IIMA/ISB/IIMI Alumni. What You’ll Do Own services end-to-end: design APIs, data models, and background jobs; write clean, well-tested code. Ship quickly: plan → implement → test → deploy multiple times a week. Scale for growth: caching, rate-limits, queue workers, observability, basic SRE hygiene. Data & storage: model relational data (Postgres/MySQL), implement search/caching (Redis/ElastiCache). Security & auth: JWT/OAuth, RBAC/ABAC, secrets, OWASP basics, audit logs. Cloud & DevOps: IaC templates, CI/CD, containerization; debug production issues. Collaboration: work closely with frontend/mobile, product, and founders; write concise tech docs. Reliability: own on-call for your services during critical sprints. Target Stack (flexible) Primary: Next.js/Node.js/TypeScript or Python (FastAPI/Django), REST/GraphQL Data: PostgreSQL, Redis; S3/object storage Infra: AWS (ECS/Fargate or EKS), Docker, Terraform, GitHub Actions Obs: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, CloudWatch, Sentry Nice: gRPC, WebSockets, Stripe/Razorpay, Kafka/PubSub, Airflow Must-Haves 5–7 years backend experience (or equivalent projects/startup work). Strong with API design, SQL, and server fundamentals (concurrency, latency, memory). Comfortable with cloud deployment (AWS/GCP/Azure) and containers. Excellent debugging skills; bias to automate tests and instrumentation. High commitment: willing to put in extra hours during sprints/launches; startup pace doesn’t scare you. Clear communication and habit of writing short design notes/PRDs. Nice-to-Haves Worked in Consumer-Tech Payments, subscriptions, or marketplace workflows. Streaming/real-time features (WebRTC/WebSockets). Basic MLOps or media processing pipelines. Experience at seed/Series-A startups or as an early engineer. Outcomes/KPIs (first 90–120 days) Ship v1 of 2–3 core services (e.g., Auth, Content API, Billing). P95 API latency < 200–300 ms for core endpoints; >99.9% uptime for user-facing APIs. Error budget & alerting defined; on-call playbooks created. CI in place with unit/integration tests; automated deploys to staging/prod. Work Mode & Hours Location: Remote-first (IST overlap required). Hours: Flexible, but expect high-intensity weeks around launches and production incidents. We value sustainable pace but need someone ready to lean in with significant hours when it matters. Compensation: Competitive Salary + significant ESOP (early joiner). Fast growth: opportunity to evolve into Founding Engineering Head.