Backend Lead

Role Summary

We are looking for a Backend Lead at the Staff Engineer level to drive the technical direction of our backend systems, mentor engineers, and ensure our platform is scalable, reliable, and secure. This role combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership across one or more product areas.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable backend services and APIs
• Own the technical roadmap for a core backend domain, aligning it with business and product goals
• Set engineering standards for code quality, architecture, testing, and performance
• Drive system design decisions, including data modelling, service boundaries, and infrastructure choices
• Mentor and guide a team of backend engineers, conducting code reviews and providing technical coaching
• Partner with Product Managers, Frontend, DevOps, and QA teams to deliver end-to-end features
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, scalability issues, and technical debt
• Champion best practices in security, observability, and system reliability
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident response for critical production issues
• Contribute to the hiring, interviewing, and onboarding of backend engineers

Required Qualifications

• 5-7 years of experience in backend software engineering, with at least 2+ years in a technical leadership or lead capacity
• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages (Java is a must)
• Deep experience with distributed systems, microservices architecture, and API design (REST/GraphQL)
• Strong understanding of relational and NoSQL databases, caching strategies, and message queues
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Solid grasp of system design principles, scalability, and fault tolerance
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders
• Track record of mentoring engineers and driving technical excellence within a team

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading platform migrations or large-scale re-architecture projects
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, etc.)
• Exposure to event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)
• Prior experience in a high-growth product or SaaS company
• Aviation domain experience