We are looking for a hands-on Senior Backend Architect who will be the technical backbone of our entire engineering organisation. You will set the architectural direction, own scalability decisions, lead and mentor backend and frontend web engineers, and make informed decisions that support our mobile (iOS/Android) and QA teams — all while staying close to the code yourself.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and evolve the backend architecture across all microservices to support 10x growth in users and transactions
- Lead system design discussions and define best practices; mentor and manage all backend engineers and frontend web developers on a day-to-day basis
- Be the primary technical decision-maker for API design, data modelling (Postgres & MongoDB), caching strategy (Redis), and infrastructure choices (Azure)
- Ensure system reliability, availability, and security
- Collaborate closely with iOS (Swift), Android (Kotlin), and React Native teams to design contracts, review integrations, and unblock mobile engineers
- Partner with QA leads to establish testing standards, staging environments, and release quality gates
- Drive observability: logging, monitoring, alerting, and incident response across all services
- Evaluate and introduce upcoming technologies that improve developer productivity and system reliability
- Maintain complete ownership of production; be available on-call for P0/P1 incidents outside business hours
- Contribute hands-on backend code; this is not a purely managerial role
- Own the CI/CD pipelines, code review culture, and engineering best practices across platforms
Required Skills & Qualifications
- 8+ years of backend engineering experience with deep expertise in Node.js or Golang, including at least 2–3 years in an architectural role
- Strong grasp of microservices architecture and API gateway patterns
- Advanced NoSQL (MongoDB) and SQL (PostgreSQL) skills — schema design, indexing, query optimisation (data modeling, aggregation, scaling strategies)
- Hands-on experience with Redis for caching, pub/sub, and session management
- Proficiency with NGINX, Cloudflare (CDN, WAF, Workers), and cloud services
- Knowledge of message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)
- Containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, or Azure AKS)
- Deep understanding of horizontal vs. vertical scaling, database sharding, and read replicas
- Good understanding of security best practices
- Strong problem-solving and leadership skills
Good to Have
- Experience with GraphQL, gRPC, or WebSocket at scale
- Knowledge of AI/ML integration patterns and LLM APIs
- Familiarity with feature flags, A/B testing infrastructure, and experimentation platforms
- Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architectures
- Exposure to event-driven architecture
- Prior experience in product-based companies
Leadership & Ownership Expectations
- Drive architectural vision and long-term technology roadmap
- Make critical technical decisions impacting the organization
- Build and manage a high-performing backend team
- Ensure alignment between business goals and technical solutions
- 2+ years of experience leading engineering teams: 1:1s, technical roadmaps, hiring, and performance
- Strong communicator who can translate technical complexity to non-technical stakeholders
- Hands-on code reviewer who sets the bar for code quality, security, and documentation
