Technical Lead - Backend Systems

Job Title: Technical Lead - Backend Systems

Role Summary

We are hiring a Lead Backend Engineer with 10+ years of experience who will own backend architecture and system design while remaining deeply hands-on. This role is for someone already making architectural decisions.

You will design, build, and evolve distributed backend systems, define architectural standards, and guide teams through complex technical decisions.

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:

o Relational databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL)

o At least one NoSQL datastore

Deep understanding of:

o Backend architecture patterns

o Design patterns (GoF, SOLID, DDD concepts)

o 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

Core Responsibilities

System Design / Architecture

Design end-to-end backend systems with a focus on scalability, resilience, and maintainability

Define service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns

Select and apply appropriate architecture patterns:

o Modular monoliths

o Microservices

o Event-driven systems

o Layered and hexagonal architectures

Drive trade-off decisions (performance vs cost vs 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 with a focus on correctness, performance, and long-term design

Data Engineering

Design and optimize schemas in RDBMS (PostgreSQL/MySQL)

o Indexing, query optimization, transactions, 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:

o Partial failures

o Retries, timeouts, and idempotency

o Horizontal scaling

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

Technical Leadership

Act as technical owner for backend systems

Mentor senior and mid-level engineers

Set engineering standards and best practices

Work closely with product and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical designs