Senior Backend Engineer

## About the role Every day, millions of developers use HackerRank to prove their skills. We're looking for a Senior Backend Software Development Engineer who can drive the technical direction of critical backend systems and lead the delivery of high-impact, platform-level initiatives. You will own the architecture and evolution of core backend services, mentor engineers across teams, and be a key technical decision-maker ensuring our platform remains fast, reliable, and scalable as we grow our global user base. ## What you'll do - Architect, design, and lead the implementation of complex backend systems and services that power core product experiences at scale. - Define and drive technical strategy for your domain, making key decisions on system design, technology choices, and long-term architectural direction. - Own the end-to-end reliability and performance of critical backend services, establishing SLOs, monitoring, and incident response best practices. - Design scalable API frameworks and data models that serve as foundations for multiple product teams and external integrations. - Lead cross-functional technical initiatives spanning multiple teams, coordinating with frontend, infrastructure, product, and design stakeholders. - Identify and drive large-scale refactoring efforts, tackling tech debt and evolving legacy systems into modern, maintainable architectures. - Mentor and grow engineers on the team through design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on technical guidance. - Contribute to engineering-wide standards, tooling, and processes that raise the bar for code quality and developer productivity. ## Who you are - Senior backend engineer with 3-6 years of experience building and operating production backend systems at scale. - Expert in at least one modern backend programming language (e.g., Python, Ruby, Go, Java, or Node.js) with strong fundamentals across the stack. - Proven ability to design and build distributed systems — you've made meaningful architectural decisions around service decomposition, data consistency, fault tolerance, and observability. - Deep expertise with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL stores, including schema design, query optimization, and data modeling for high-throughput workloads. - Strong understanding of caching strategies (Redis/Memcached), asynchronous messaging (Kafka/RabbitMQ), and event-driven architectures. - Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code practices. - Track record of leading technical projects from ambiguous problem statements through to production delivery. ## AI fluency - Deep, hands-on proficiency with AI-powered development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) — you don't just use them, you've developed workflows and best practices around them that you can teach others. - Strong working knowledge of LLMs and agentic AI systems — you understand model capabilities, limitations, context management, tool use, and can reason about when and how to integrate AI into backend systems. - Proven ability to leverage AI across the full software development lifecycle: architecture exploration, implementation, code review, test generation, documentation, incident analysis, and technical writing. - Solid understanding of AI/ML fundamentals: transformer architectures, embedding models, inference optimization, RAG patterns, fine-tuning vs. prompt engineering trade-offs, and evaluation methodologies. - Ability to evaluate and make technical recommendations on AI tooling, APIs, and integration patterns for your team and domain — including cost, latency, reliability, and security considerations. - You actively follow developments in AI research and tooling, can separate hype from real engineering value, and drive adoption of AI-augmented practices within your team. ## Even better if you have - Experience designing and operating systems serving millions of concurrent users with strict latency and availability requirements. - Deep expertise in system design patterns such as Microservices, CQRS, Event Sourcing, or Domain-Driven Design, with real-world application. - Significant experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including serverless architectures, managed services, and cost optimization. - Experience building platform-level APIs, SDKs, or developer tools consumed by internal or external engineering teams. - A history of driving engineering culture improvements — whether through RFC processes, architecture review boards, or engineering blog contributions. ## You will thrive in this role if - You think beyond the immediate task and consider the long-term health, extensibility, and operational cost of the systems you build. - You take ownership not just of your own code, but of the overall quality and direction of the systems your team delivers. - You are energized by ambiguity — you can take a loosely defined problem, structure it, and drive it to a well-engineered solution. - You lead by influence, earning trust through strong technical judgment and a collaborative, ego-free approach. - You genuinely enjoy making other engineers better through mentorship, knowledge sharing, and raising the engineering bar. ## Compensation The base salary range for this role is $150,000 – $172,000, plus a target 10% annual bonus tied to individual and company performance. You will also receive equity (stock options) and a comprehensive package of cash and non-cash benefits.