Backend Developer

Position of the role

The Principal Engineer reports to the Domain Lead and plays a key role in driving the technical vision, strategy, and execution of development initiatives. The Principal Engineer collaborates with multiple teams to ensure that software solutions are scalable, cost-optimized, performant, and aligned with business objectives.

Result expectation in terms of result areas and core activities

The Principal Engineer is responsible for defining, designing, and overseeing the implementation of complex software solutions. This role involves deep technical expertise, mentorship, and architectural guidance across multiple teams. The Principal Engineer also acts as a thought leader, influencing technology choices, best practices, and innovation within the organization.

Main objectives of the role

✔ Leading the design and architecture of the software by following best practices that ensure scalability, maintainability, cost optimization, and high performance.

✔ Driving innovation and continuous improvements in software development practices.

✔ Providing technical mentorship and coaching to engineers across teams.

✔ Ensuring the successful delivery of high-quality software aligned with business requirements.

✔ Defining and maintaining coding standards, best practices, and governance frameworks.

✔ Collaborating with product management and other stakeholders to shape the technical roadmap.

✔ Identifying technical debt and implementing strategies to mitigate it effectively.

✔ Promoting a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and cross-team collaboration.

✔ Leading DevOps, CI/CD, and automation to improve software delivery processes and efficiency.

Specialisation

✔ Deep understanding of software architecture, system design, and performance optimization.

✔ Translating complex business requirements into scalable and efficient software solutions.

✔ Handling large data transformations and ensuring system efficiency under the required load conditions.

✔ Leading initiatives for modernizing the technology stack and implementing best practices.

✔ Ensuring that security, scalability, and maintainability are embedded into development processes.

✔ Driving research and development efforts to explore emerging technologies and their business impact.

✔ Enabling teams to develop and maintain high-quality software through code reviews, architecture guidance, and technical strategy.

✔ Collaborating with product owners and stakeholders to ensure that development aligns with business goals and user needs.

Key processes in the role

✔ Agile / Scrum / Kanban development methodologies.

✔ CI/CD and DevOps practices to streamline delivery.

✔ Cloud-native architecture, monolith and microservices-based development.

✔ Scalable and high-performance computing strategies.

✔ Secure software development lifecycle (SDLC).

✔ Data-driven decision-making.

✔ Performance optimization.

Key relationships (teams and/or position titles)

✔ Engineering Teams (Developers, QA, DevOps).

✔ Head of Engineering and Technology Leadership.

✔ Product Management and Business Stakeholders.

✔ Customer Success and Solution Architects.

✔ External Technical Partners and Vendors.

Requirements

✔ Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

✔ 10+ years of experience in software development, with a proven track record .

✔ Strong experience in Python and modern software engineering practices.

✔ Expertise in cloud computing platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

✔ Experience in architecting and developing scalable, high-performance applications.

✔ Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps tools, and automation.

✔ Deep understanding of microservices, monolith, APIs, and distributed systems.

✔ Strong experience with database technologies, including SQL and NoSQL.

✔ Excellent communication and leadership skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across teams.

✔ A passion for mentoring, coaching, and fostering a strong engineering culture.

✔ Experience in defining and implementing technical governance and best practices.

Competences

✔ Strategic Thinking - 4

✔ Analytical Problem Solving - 4

✔ Technical Leadership & Mentorship - 4

✔ Communication & Collaboration - 3

Measures of success

✔ Technical leadership impact - measurable improvements in code quality, architecture, and scalability.

✔ Delivery of high-quality software within agreed timelines and business requirements.

✔ Successful mentorship - improvement in team skill levels, problem-solving capabilities, and innovation.

✔ Reduction of technical debt through strategic refactoring and modernization.

✔ Engineering team satisfaction - based on feedback and collaboration effectiveness.

✔ Improvements in system performance, stability, cost-optimization, and security.

✔ Adoption of best practices and emerging technologies across teams.

✔ Contribution to company-wide strategic initiatives through technical innovation and leadership.

Who You Are:

• You’ve built scalable, production-ready APIs in fast-paced environments, and are comfortable with the challenges that come with a growing startup.
• You understand event-driven architectures and have hands-on experience building real-time applications.
• You are fully capable of taking ownership of backend systems, from designing the database schema to writing efficient, maintainable code.
• You think beyond the code: optimizing performance, scalability, and security are as important as building new features.
• You’re comfortable troubleshooting complex issues, whether that’s API bottlenecks, database performance, or production issues.

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and manage a NestJS backend with a modular, scalable architecture that can easily handle real-time events and communication.
• Develop and maintain WebSocket services for real-time event-driven updates and ensure seamless communication across the system.
• Integrate RabbitMQ for reliable internal messaging, handling queues and ensuring event-driven workflows are efficient and fault-tolerant.
• Implement database management strategies using MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch, ensuring efficient data handling, indexing, and optimization.
• Integrate with external APIs (JSON-RPC, XML-RPC, REST) to enhance system capabilities.
• Ensure high performance of the system by optimizing database queries, implementing caching strategies using Redis, and ensuring optimal indexing and data flow.
• Implement role-based authentication and authorization mechanisms using JWT, OAuth, and RBAC patterns within NestJS.
• Follow security best practices to ensure sensitive data is protected, credentials are stored securely, and the system is resilient to common vulnerabilities.
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless integration between different services and technologies.

Must-Have Skills:

• Strong proficiency in Node.js and NestJS with TypeScript.
• Solid experience with MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch for data storage and real-time data handling.
• In-depth knowledge of WebSockets and Socket.IO in NestJS Gateways, enabling real-time communication and updates.
• Experience with RabbitMQ for message queuing and asynchronous task handling.
• Strong understanding of authentication & authorization systems using JWT, OAuth, and RBAC (Role-Based Access Control).
• Expertise in optimizing APIs, including techniques for caching, improving database performance, and reducing latency.
• Familiar with API security best practices, including secure storage of credentials, encryption, and safeguarding sensitive data.

Key Skills:

• TypeScript, NestJS, WebSockets, Socket.io
• Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ
• API Optimization, JWT, OAuth, RBAC
• Real-time communication, Event-driven architecture

• Python knowledge: object-oriented programming: inheritance, abstract classes, dataclass, dependency injection, design patterns: comand-query, repository, adapter, hexagonal architecture, swagger/Open API, flask, connexion
• Experience on AWS services: lambda, ecs, sqs, s3, dynamodb, auroradb
• Experience with following libraries boto3, behave, pytest, moto, localstack, docker
• Basic knowledge about terraform, gitlab ci
• Experience with SQL DB

• Apply fundamental software engineering design principles and write effective, scalable code.
• Develop back-end components to improve responsiveness and overall performance
• Strong understanding of multi-threading, synchronization & performance analysis of web applications
• Highly experienced with developing RESTful API’s
• Integrate user-facing elements into applications
• Develop unit tests, automation and debug code
• Improve & maintain the functionality of existing systems
• Implement security and data protection solutions
• Understand the big picture, coordinate with internal teams to understand user requirements and provide technical solutions

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or relevant field.
• 5+ work experience as a Python Developer
• Expertise in Django or at least one other popular Python web framework
• (like Flask or Pyramid)
• Excellent Python 3 development & debugging skills
• Knowledge of object oriented analysis & design as well as object-relational mapping (ORM) techniques
• Strong understanding microservices architecture & design patterns
• Strong understanding of RESTful API design principles, including good
• documentation of API using Swagger/OpenAPI specifications
• Familiarity with GIT
• Familiarity with microservices development & deployment, including CI/CD pipelines
• (e.g. Jenkins) and containerization platforms (e.g, Docker)
• Familiarity with front-end technologies (like JavaScript and HTML5)
• Excellent team spirit & exceptional problem-solving skills