Backend Developer

Role overview

The client is building a multimodal AI platform that processes multi-hour video, audio and text to generate structured insights, narratives and highlight workflows for broadcasters and media organisations.

We are seeking a Backend / Platform Engineer to design and build high-throughput media pipelines, robust APIs, and model-serving infrastructure that connect our AI engine (video perception + multimodal reasoning) to real products and customer environments.

This is not a CRUD‑only backend role.

You will work on:

• long‑running jobs
• distributed processing
• GPU inference orchestration
• storage for embeddings and metadata
• integration with AI models
• reliability and observability at scale

Key responsibilities

Media ingestion & processing pipelines

• Design and implement ingestion pipelines for multi‑hour video and audio content.
• Build microservices for frame extraction, audio processing, transcription integration and metadata generation.
• Handle long‑running, asynchronous jobs using queues, workers and robust retry strategies.
• Integrate with FFmpeg or similar tools for transcoding, segmenting and preparing media for AI models.

API & platform architecture

• Design and implement REST/gRPC APIs that expose AI model outputs (perception, multimodal alignment, narratives) to frontend and external systems.
• Define clear contracts for internal services and external integrations.
• Implement authentication, authorisation and rate‑limiting for platform endpoints.
• Ensure backward‑compatible API evolution as the product matures.

Model‑serving & AI integration

• Integrate with AI inference services (video models, multimodal models, LLM/VLM) running on GPUs or specialised infrastructure.
• Design request/response flows that handle large payloads, streaming outputs and structured results.
• Optimise throughput and latency for inference pipelines, including batching, caching and concurrency control.
• Collaborate closely with AI engineers to productionise models and debug end‑to‑end behaviour.

Storage, data models & performance

• Design data models to store embeddings, timelines, metadata, scene/shot boundaries, and narrative units.
• Work with appropriate storage technologies (SQL/NoSQL, object storage, search indices) based on access patterns.
• Implement indexing and query strategies for fast retrieval of segments, highlights and multimodal insights.
• Optimise performance for large datasets and high‑volume workloads.

Reliability, observability & operations

• Implement logging, metrics and tracing across services for debugging and monitoring.
• Set up health checks, circuit breakers and graceful degradation for critical services.
• Work with CI/CD pipelines to ensure safe, repeatable deployments.
• Collaborate on Kubernetes‑based deployments (or equivalent orchestration) for scaling services.

Requirements (must‑have)

Experience:

• 4–8 years in backend or platform engineering.
• At least 3 years working on distributed systems, high‑throughput services or complex pipelines (not just simple CRUD apps).

Languages & frameworks:

• Strong proficiency in Python or Node.js (one primary, both are a plus).
• Experience with at least one modern backend framework (FastAPI, Flask, Express, NestJS, etc.).

Distributed systems & pipelines:

• Hands‑on experience with queues and workers (e.g. Celery, RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS, etc.).
• Experience building asynchronous, long‑running job pipelines.
• Understanding of idempotency, retries, backoff, and failure handling.

APIs & integration:

• Strong experience designing and implementing REST APIs (gRPC is a plus).
• Experience integrating with external services and handling network‑level failures.

Cloud & infrastructure:

• Experience deploying services on AWS, GCP or Azure (EC2/Compute Engine, S3/GCS, IAM, networking basics).
• Experience with Docker; exposure to Kubernetes is a strong plus.

Data & storage:

• Experience with SQL and at least one NoSQL store.
• Ability to design schemas and data models for performance and maintainability.

Engineering quality:

• Strong debugging skills across services and environments.
• Experience with unit/integration tests for backend systems.
• Clear, structured communication in English.

Nice‑to‑have

• Experience with media/video processing (FFmpeg, transcoding, segmenting).
• Experience with AI/ML model integration (serving models, handling inference requests).
• Experience with search/retrieval systems (e.g. Elasticsearch, vector databases).
• Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
• Experience working with remote teams across time zones.

What we are explicitly NOT looking for

To reduce noise and mismatches, we are not looking for:

• Pure CRUD‑only backend developers with no pipeline or distributed systems experience.
• Engineers who have only worked on small, single‑service apps without scale or complexity.
• Candidates who cannot explain trade‑offs in architecture, data modelling and reliability.
• Candidates who are uncomfortable with ownership of subsystems end‑to‑end.

Why join us

• Work on real, complex problems at the intersection of media, AI and distributed systems.
• Collaborate with senior AI engineers working on perception, multimodal fusion and narrative reasoning.
• Build the core platform that turns AI models into a usable product for broadcasters and media organisations.
• Operate with high ownership, clear expectations and direct access to the CTO.

• Experience in Node.js Frameworks
• Hands-on experience with MongoDB
• Strong proficiency with JavaScript, Socket IO, ExpressJS & SailsJS
• Experience working with third-party developer tools, including documentation, APIs, and SDKs
• Good Grasp of Asynchronous Programming and Its Workarounds
• Database Schema design for Business Processes
• Working Knowledge of JWT-based passport Authentication
• Can Write and Refactor Efficient Codes
• Experience in Implementing Data Protection
• Must have demonstrated the ability to deliver high-quality products on time
• Knowledge of GIT, SVN technology

Kutumb is the first and largest communities platform for Bharat. We are growing at an exponential trajectory. More than 1 Crore users use Kutumb to connect with their community. We are backed by world-class VCs and angel investors. We are growing and looking for exceptional Backend Developers to join our Engineering team.

More on this here - https://kutumbapp.com/why-join-us">https://kutumbapp.com/why-join-us.html

Core Responsibilities:

• Design and develop real-time, resillient and high availabilty systems
• Architect and Build Microservices
• Iterating and building experiments
• Will be working with Node.js, Go, MySQL and Redis

You are the right fit if you have:

• Strong systems, architecture and database fundamentals
• Build from scratch and be a good decision maker
• The Ownership skills and can own the problems end to end
• The Zeal and willingness to put in extra efforts to build a product which will be used by millions of users, and most importantly
• The ability to find the solution to any problem and get things done

What we offer:

• High pace of learning
• Opportunity to build the product from scratch
• High autonomy and ownership
• A great and ambitious team to work with
• Opportunity to work on something that really matters
• Top of the class market salary and meaningful ESOP ownership

 2+ years experience as a developer with a proven track record in on-time and successful deliveries.

- Must be highly proficient in NodeJS, Javascript and MySQL with Microservices (REST web services )

- Work end to end on micro-services and SPAs built on cutting-edge technologies like Nodejs (Strong practical experience preferred)

- Strong knowledge of database & web applications.

- Preferred : grunt, wagner, npm, passport, redix, chai

- Excellent problem solving and communication skills, so that you are able to articulate technical concepts to the team, also excellent development, and debugging skills

- Ability to learn, act, and thrive in a fast-paced environment with a distributed team

Duties & Responsibilities :

- Should be taking requirements to design and building reusable modules.

- Building, scaling and performance tuning.

- Advance understanding of front-end technologies, such as HTML5 and CSS3.

- Advance understanding in AWS, NPM (Node JS Package Manager), GIT and Unit testing.

- Strong work experience in Design Patterns and Algorithms.

- Experience with debugging, troubleshooting and problem-solving issues.

- Must have strong communication skills.

What you need to have: