Job Description
Roles & Responsibilities
Role Overview
The Senior Backend Engineer will design, build, and operate the backend systems that power a high-growth B2B SaaS platform, owning meaningful features and services end to end. This role requires depth on the server side, sound judgment under ambiguity, and a bias toward pragmatic solutions built primarily in PHP and Go on MySQL/MariaDB. The Senior Backend Engineer will serve as a senior technical leader alongside the Staff Software Engineer, contributing directly to platform reliability, performance, and roadmap.
Location
Fully Remote (Work from Home) | 9AM - 5PM PST
Key Responsibilities
Architecture & Implementation
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Architect, implement, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs in PHP and Go.
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Handle integrations and background processing as the product requires.
Data Modeling & Performance
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Own data modeling and persistence, including relational databases and caching.
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Ensure sound schema design, efficient queries, and operational resilience using MySQL/MariaDB.
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Profile, debug, and tune performance; contribute automated tests where they materially reduce risk.
Operations & Mentorship
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Participate in CI/CD and operational practice with the team so changes ship safely and often.
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Support production and customer-impacting issues with clear communication and durable fixes.
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Document and share technical context so the codebase remains maintainable as the team grows.
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Provide technical leadership, code review, architectural guidance, and mentorship to junior developers.
Qualifications Experience
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5+ years of professional backend engineering experience, with at least 2 years at a senior level.
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Strong, demonstrated production experience with PHP or Go (Golang).
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Hands-on MySQL/MariaDB experience in production environments.
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Experience navigating a scale-up/growth-stage company or an enterprise-scale organization.
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Telephony, dialer, CCaaS, or telco-adjacent domain experience is strongly preferred.
Qualifications Skills
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Proven track record of owning backend systems end to end including design, implementation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
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Experience with RESTful API design and implementation.
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Familiarity with event-driven architecture, background processing, or event sourcing patterns.
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Self-directed individual who takes ownership without being asked.
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Proactively communicates risks and blockers to teammates and stakeholders.
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Able to take an ambiguous problem, propose an approach, gain alignment, and deliver with minimal hand-holding.
What Success Looks Like
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First 90 Days: Independently trace a request from API entry to database and back, and ship at least one meaningful pull request to production within 30 days.
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First 180 Days: Deliver a visible, measurable improvement in the owned area such as latency reduction, uptime improvement, or query optimization.
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End of Year One: Own at least one core backend area with full accountability for its reliability, performance, and roadmap, leaving it meaningfully easier to build on than when you joined.
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Culture Impact: Contribute to the engineering team's culture of documentation, code quality, and operational discipline in a way that makes the whole team more effective.