Role Summary 

We are seeking a highly experienced Staff Backend Developer to anchor the engineering efforts for the CERius platform. You will serve as a primary technical authority, responsible for architecting high-scale, resilient backend systems that turn complex industrial data into actionable sustainability insights. You will move beyond task execution to define technical strategy and ensure the platform’s architecture remains robust, scalable, and secure in an AWS cloud-native environment. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Architectural Leadership: Own the design and evolution of the CERius backend architecture, ensuring it supports high-throughput data processing and complex computational logic. 

• System Strategy: Drive long-term technical roadmaps, balancing the need for rapid feature delivery with the necessity of mitigating technical debt. 

• Engineering Excellence: Set the standard for clean, maintainable, and modular code. Act as the final point of escalation for complex architectural challenges and production-critical issues. 

• Cloud & Scalability: Architect and oversee the deployment of services within AWS, ensuring optimal performance, cost-efficiency, and high availability (using Docker, Kubernetes, and Serverless paradigms). 

• Mentorship & Influence: Serve as a technical mentor to senior and mid-level developers, conducting high-level code reviews and fostering a culture of TDD and operational rigor. 

• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate directly with Product Management, Data Scientists, and Frontend leads to align backend capabilities with the CERius strategic vision. 

Required Technical Skills 

• Advanced Backend Development (Python or Java): 

• Python: Expert-level mastery of asynchronous programming, performance optimization in FastAPI/Flask, and deep knowledge of memory management. 

• Java: Extensive experience with Spring Boot, JVM tuning, high-concurrency patterns, and large-scale microservice orchestration. 

• Advanced API & System Design: 

• Proven experience designing complex, versioned RESTful/gRPC API ecosystems for large-scale enterprise platforms. 

• Expertise in API security patterns, distributed request-response lifecycles, and managing high-scale third-party integrations. 

• Data Architecture & Strategy: 

• Deep expertise in relational (PostgreSQL/Oracle) and NoSQL (DynamoDB/MongoDB) database design. 

• Advanced query optimization, partitioning strategies, and ORM performance tuning at scale. 

• Experience designing data models that support both transactional reliability and analytical performance. 

• Deep experience designing distributed systems using asynchronous communication patterns. 

• Observability and Platform Reliability 

• Experience implementing monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting solutions using CloudWatch, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, or similar platforms.  

• Understanding of SLOs, SLIs, incident response processes, and production operational excellence. 

• AWS Cloud & DevOps Architecture: 

• Comprehensive experience in AWS services (S3, API Gateway, RDS, Lambda, EKS/ECS, AWS Bedrock). 

• Proficiency in containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure-as-code concepts. 

• Security 

• Experience implementing secure software development practices in cloud-native environments. 

• Strong understanding of IAM, encryption, secrets management, vulnerability remediation, and secure API design. 

• Software Engineering Leadership: 

• Mastery of Git workflows, CI/CD pipeline optimization, and advanced TDD/Integration testing frameworks. 

• Expertise in working within Agile/Scrum and ADO environments, with a focus on streamlining delivery processes. 

• Lead architecture reviews and establish backend engineering standards. 

Required Qualifications 

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. 

• Experience: 10+ years of professional backend development, with at least 3+ years in a Staff, Lead capacity. 

• Proven Track Record: Demonstrable history of architecting systems that have scaled to meet significant user or data volume demands. 

Soft Skills 

• Strategic Problem Solving: Proven ability to navigate ambiguity and prioritize technical initiatives based on business impact. 

• Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate architectural decisions and technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders and executive leadership. 

• Influence: Ability to lead through influence rather than command, fostering alignment across diverse, cross-functional teams. 

• Resilience: Track record of independently diagnosing and resolving complex, production-level system failures. 

Preferred Technical Requirements 

• AI/GenAI Platform Capabilities 

• Experience integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI services into enterprise applications. 

• Familiarity with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases, embeddings, and prompt orchestration frameworks. 

• Experience building scalable APIs and workflows that incorporate AI/ML services. 

• Understanding of AI observability, evaluation frameworks, hallucination detection, and production monitoring.  

• Experience with AI governance, model lifecycle management, and responsible AI practices.