SDE I: Backend Engineer (Symfony / Laravel)

Our Mission

To make video as accessible to machines as text and voice are today.

At lookup, we believe the world's most valuable asset is trapped. Video is everywhere, but it's unsearchable—a black box of insight that no one can open or atleast open affordably. We’re changing that. We're building the search engine for the visual world, so anyone can find or do anything with video just by asking.

Text is queryable. Voice is transcribed. Video, the largest and richest data source of all, is still a black box. A computer can't understand it, and so its value remains trapped.

Our mission at lookup is to fix this.

About the Role

We are looking for founding Backend Engineers to build a highly performant, reliable, and scalable API platform that makes enterprise video knowledge readily available for video search, summarization, and natural‑language Q&A. You will partner closely with our ML team working on vision‑language models to productionize research and deliver fast, trustworthy APIs for customers.

Examples of technical challenges you will work on include: distributed video storage, a unified application framework and data model for indexing large video libraries, low‑latency clip retrieval, vector search at scale, and end‑to‑end build, test, deploy, and observability in cloud environments.

What You’ll Do:

• Design and build robust backend services and APIs (REST, gRPC) for vector search, video summarization, and video Q&A.
• Own API performance and reliability, including low‑latency retrieval, pagination, rate limiting, and backwards‑compatible versioning.
• Design schemas and tune queries in Postgres, and integrate with unstructured storage.
• Implement observability across metrics, logs, and traces. Set error budgets and SLOs.
• Write clear design docs and ship high‑quality, well‑tested code.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to integrate and productionize VLMs and retrieval pipelines.
• Take ownership of architecture from inception to production launch.

Who You Are:

• 3+ years of professional experience in backend development.
• Proven experience building and scaling polished WebSocket, gRPC, and REST APIs.
• Exposure to distributed systems and container orchestration (Docker and Kubernetes).
• Hands‑on experience with AWS.
• Strong knowledge of SQL (Postgres) and NoSQL (e.g., Cassandra), including schema design, query optimization, and scaling.
• Familiarity with our stack is a plus, but not mandatory: Python (FastAPI), Celery, Kafka, Postgres, Redis, Weaviate, React.
• Ability to diagnose complex issues, identify root causes, and implement effective fixes.
• Comfortable working in a fast‑paced startup environment.

Nice to have:

• Hands-on work with LLM agents, vector embeddings, or RAG applications.
• Building video streaming pipelines and storage systems at scale (FFmpeg, RTSP, WebRTC).
• Proficiency with modern frontend frameworks (React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS) and responsive UI design.

Location & Culture

• Full-time, in-office role in Bangalore (we’re building fast and hands-on).
• Must be comfortable with a high-paced environment and collaboration across PST time zones for our US customers and investors.
• Expect startup speed — daily founder syncs, rapid design-to-prototype cycles, and a culture of deep ownership.

Why You’ll Love This Role

• Work on the frontier of video understanding and real-world AI — products that can redefine trust and automation.
• Build core APIs that make video queryable and power real customer use.
• Own systems end to end: performance, reliability, and developer experience.
• Work closely with founders and collaborate in person in Bangalore.
• Competitive salary with meaningful early equity.

About the Company-

AdPushup is an award-winning ad revenue optimization platform and Google Certified Publishing Partner (GCPP), helping hundreds of web publishers grow their revenue using cutting-edge technology, premium demand partnerships, and proven ad ops expertise.

Our team is a mix of engineers, marketers, product evangelists, and customer success specialists, united by a common goal of helping publishers succeed. We have a work culture that values expertise, ownership, and a collaborative spirit.

Job Overview- Java Backend- Lead Role :-

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Software Engineering Team Lead to join our dynamic team. The ideal candidate will have a strong technical background, proven leadership experience, and a passion for mentoring and developing a team of talented engineers. This role will be pivotal in driving the successful delivery of high-quality software solutions and fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.

Exp- 5+ years

Location- New Delhi

Work Mode- Hybrid

Key Responsibilities:-

● Leadership and Mentorship: Lead, mentor, and develop a team of software engineers, fostering an environment of continuous improvement and professional growth.

● Project Management: Oversee the planning, execution, and delivery of software projects, ensuring they meet quality standards, timelines, and budget constraints.

● Technical Expertise: Provide technical guidance and expertise in software design, architecture, development, and best practices. Stay updated with the latest industry trends and technologies. Design, develop, and maintain high-quality applications, taking full, end-to-end ownership, including writing test cases, setting up monitoring, etc.

● Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams to define project requirements, scope, and deliverables.

● Code Review and Quality Assurance: Conduct code reviews to ensure adherence to coding standards, best practices, and overall software quality. Implement and enforce quality assurance processes.

● Problem Solving: Identify, troubleshoot, and resolve technical challenges and bottlenecks. Provide innovative solutions to complex problems.

● Performance Management: Set clear performance expectations, provide regular feedback, and conduct performance evaluations for team members.

● Documentation: Ensure comprehensive documentation of code, processes, and project-related information.

Qualifications:-

● Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

● Experience: Minimum of 5 years of experience in software development.

● Technical Skills:

○ A strong body of prior backend work, successfully delivered in production. Experience building large volume data processing pipelines will be an added bonus.

○ Expertise in Core Java.

■ In-depth knowledge of the Java concurrency framework.

■ Sound knowledge of concepts like exception handling, garbage collection, and generics.

■ Experience in writing unit test cases, using any framework.

■ Hands-on experience with lambdas and streams.

■ Experience in using build tools like Maven and Ant.

○ Good understanding and Hands on experience of any Java frameworks e.g. SpringBoot, Vert.x will be an added advantage.

○ Good understanding of security best practices. ○ Hands-on experience with Low Level and High Level Design Practices and Patterns.

○ Hands on experience with any of the cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

○ Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools like Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform.

○ Strong understanding of database technologies, both SQL (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (e.g., MongoDB, Couchbase).

○ Knowledge of DevOps practices and tools such as Jenkins, CI/CD.

○ Strong understanding of software development methodologies (e.g., Agile, Scrum).

● Leadership Skills: Proven ability to lead, mentor, and inspire a team of engineers. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.

● Problem-Solving Skills: Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities. Ability to think critically and provide innovative solutions.

● Project Management: Experience in managing software projects from conception to delivery. Strong organizational and time-management skills.

● Collaboration: Ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team environment. Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills.

● Adaptability: Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and adapt to changing priorities and requirements.

Why Should You Work for AdPushup?

At AdPushup, we have

1. A culture of valuing our employees and promoting an autonomous, transparent, and ethical work environment.

2. Talented and supportive peers who value your contributions.

3. Challenging opportunities: learning happens outside the comfort-zone and that’s where our team likes to be - always pushing the boundaries and growing personally and professionally.

4. Flexibility to work from home: We believe in work & performance instead of measuring conventional benchmarks like work-hours.

5. Plenty of snacks and catered lunch.

6. Transparency: an open, honest and direct communication with co-workers and business associates.

We are looking for a PHP Developer responsible for managing back-end services and the interchange of data between the server and the users. Your primary focus will be the development of all server-side logic, definition and maintenance of the database, and ensuring high performance and responsiveness to requests from the front-end. You will also be responsible for integrating the front-end elements built by your co-workers into the application. Therefore, a basic understanding of front-end technologies is necessary as well.

Responsibilities

• Integration of user-facing elements developed by front-end developers
• Build efficient, testable, and reusable PHP modules
• Solve complex performance problems and architectural challenges
• Integration of data storage solutions

Skills And Qualifications

• Strong knowledge of PHP web frameworks such as Codeigniter
• Basic understanding of front-end technologies, such as JavaScript, JQuery, HTML, and CSS
• Familiarity with MySQL databases and their declarative query languages
• Understanding of MVC design patterns
• Knowledge of object oriented PHP programming
• Strong knowledge of the common PHP or web server exploits and their solutions
• Understanding fundamental design principles behind a scalable application
• Good problem-solving skills.
• Good team player that is enthusiastic about delivering results

Education Should be ME/MCS/MCA/BE