Sr. Backend Engineer (Python)

About us

Astra is a cyber security SaaS company that makes otherwise chaotic pentests a breeze with its one of a kind Pentest Platform. Astra's continuous vulnerability scanner emulates hacker behavior to scan applications for 8300+ security tests. CTOs & CISOs love Astra because it helps them fix vulnerabilities in record time and move from DevOps to DevSecOps with Astra's CI/CD integrations.

Astra is loved by 650+ companies across the globe. In 2023 Astra uncovered 2 million+ vulnerabilities for its customers, saving customers $69M+ in potential losses due to security vulnerabilities. 

We've been awarded by the President of France Mr. François Hollande at the La French Tech program and Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi at the Global Conference on Cyber Security. Loom, MamaEarth, Muthoot Finance, Canara Robeco, ScripBox etc. are a few of Astra’s customers.

Role Overview

As an SDE 2 Back-end Engineer at Astra, you will play a crucial role in the development of a new vulnerability scanner from scratch. You will be architecting & engineering a scalable technical solution from the ground-up.

You will have the opportunity to work alongside talented individuals, collaborating to deliver innovative solutions and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in vulnerability scanning. The role requires deep collaboration with the founders, product, engineering & security teams.

Join our team and contribute to the development of a cutting-edge SaaS security platform, where high-quality engineering and continuous learning are at the core of everything we do.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• You will be joining our Vulnerability Scanner team which builds a security engine to identify vulnerabilities in technical infrastructure.
• You will be the technical product owner of the scanner, which would involve managing a lean team of backend engineers to ensure smooth implementation of the technical product roadmap.
• Research about security vulnerabilities, CVEs, and zero-days affecting cloud/web/API infrastructure.
• Work in an agile environment of engineers to architect, design, develop and build our microservice infrastructure.
• You will research, design, code, troubleshoot and support (on-call). What you create is also what you own.
• Writing secure, high quality, modular, testable & well documented code for features outlined in every sprint.
• Design and implement APIs in support of other services with a highly scalable, flexible, and secure backend using GoLang
• Hands-on experience with creating production-ready code & optimizing it by identifying and correcting bottlenecks.
• Driving strict code review standards among the team.
• Ensuring timely delivery of the features/products
• Working with product managers to ensure product delivery status is transparent & the end product always looks like how it was imagined
• Work closely with Security & Product teams in writing vulnerability detection rules, APIs etc.

Required Qualifications & Skills: 

• Strong 2-4 years relevant development experience in GoLang
• Experience in building a technical product from idea to production.
• Design and build highly scalable and maintainable systems in Golang
• Expertise in Goroutines and Channels to write efficient code utilizing multi-core CPU optimally
• Must have hands-on experience with managing AWS/Google Cloud infrastructure
• Hands on experience in creating low latency high throughput REST APIs
• Write test suites and maintain code coverage above 80%
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka
• Good to have experience in Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka
• Good understanding of Data Structures, Algorithms and Operating Systems.
• Understanding of cloud/web security concepts would be an added advantage

What We Offer:

• Adrenalin rush of being a part of a fast-growing company
• Fully remote & agile working environment
• A wholesome opportunity in a fast-paced environment where you get to build things from scratch, improve and influence product design decisions
• Holistic understanding of SaaS and enterprise security business
• Opportunity to engage and collaborate with developers globally
• Experience with security side of things
• Annual trips to beaches or mountains (last one was Chikmangaluru)
• Open and supportive culture 

Company Overview-

A venture-backed funded startup valued at 30.5 Million Dollars.

The team co-founders are both IIT-IIM Alumni with a strong professional background and are backed by some of the leading global and Indian funds and entrepreneurs.

Role Overview 

As a  Backend Engineer, you will be working closely with our core team in building products from scratch into large-scale platforms and solving business problems leveraging new and innovative technology. More than anything, we are looking for engineers that are eager to learn and build a meaningful company. We are a small team and encourage engineers to wear many hats

Responsibilities 

- Design and build highly reliable and performant applications that deliver a great user experience. 

- Own large technical deliverables and execute in a structured manner. - Take accountability for the overall health of the applications you build. - Platform components as libraries, utilities and promote reuse. 

- Be able to conceptualize and develop prototypes quickly 

Skills & Requirements 

▪ Work Experience between 1-3 years in large scale applications with the desire to work in fast-paced startups 

▪ Experience/Knowledge of Node.JS, Express.JS, AWS, MongoDB. 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Rewrite existing APIs in NodeJS. 
• Remodel the APIs into Micro services-based architecture. 
• Implement a caching layer wherever possible. 
• Optimize the API for high performance and scalability. 
• Write unit tests for API Testing.
• Automate the code testing and deployment process.

Skills Required:

• At least 2 years of experience developing Backends using NodeJS — should be well versed with its asynchronous nature & event loop, and know its quirks and workarounds. 
• Excellent hands-on experience using MySQL or any other SQL Database. 
• Good knowledge of MongoDB or any other NoSQL Database. 
• Good knowledge of Redis, its data types, and their use cases. 
• Experience with graph-based databases like GraphQL and Neo4j. 
• Experience developing and deploying REST APIs. 
• Good knowledge of Unit Testing and available Test Frameworks. 
• Good understanding of advanced JS libraries and frameworks. 
• Experience with Web sockets, Service Workers, and Web Push Notifications. 
• Familiar with NodeJS profiling tools. 
• Proficient understanding of code versioning tools such as Git. 
• Good knowledge of creating and maintaining DevOps infrastructure on cloud platforms. 
• Should be a fast learner and a go-getter — without any fear of trying out new things Preferences. 
• Experience building a large scale social or location-based app.

• Preferred Education & Experience:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Applications, Mathematics, Statistics or related technical field or equivalent practical experience. Relevant experience of at least 3 years in lieu of above if from a different stream of education.

• Well-versed in and 5+ years of hands-on demonstrable experience with:
  ▪ Object Oriented Modeling, Design, & Programming
  ▪ Microservices Architecture, API Design, & Implementation
  ▪ Relational, Document, & Graph Data Modeling, Design, & Implementation

• Well-versed in and hands-on demonstrable experience with:
  ▪ Stream & Batch Big Data Pipeline Processing
  ▪ Distributed Cloud Native Computing
  ▪ Serverless Computing & Cloud Functions

• 5+ years of hands-on development experience in Java programming.

• 3+ years of hands-on development experience in one or more libraries & frameworks such as Spring Boot, Apache Camel, Akka, etc.;
  extra points if you can demonstrate your knowledge with working examples.
  2+ years of hands-on development experience in one or more Relational and NoSQL datastores such as Amazon S3, Amazon DocumentDB, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, Amazon Aurora, AWS DynamoDB, Amazon Athena, etc.

• 2+ years of hands-on development experience in one or more technologies such as Amazon Simple Queue Service, Amazon Kinesis, Apache Kafka, AWS Lambda, AWS Batch, AWS Glue, AWS Step Functions, Amazon API Gateway, etc.

• 2+ years of hands-on development experience in one or more technologies such as AWS Developer Tools, AWS Management & Governance, AWS Networking and Content Delivery, AWS Security, Identity, and Compliance, etc.

• Well-versed in Virtualization & Containerization; must demonstrate experience in technologies such as Kubernetes, Istio, Docker, OpenShift, Anthos, Oracle VirtualBox, Vagrant, etc.

• Well-versed with demonstrable working experience with API Management, API Gateway, Service Mesh, Identity & Access Management, Data Protection & Encryption.

• Hands-on experience with demonstrable working experience with DevOps tools and platforms viz., Jira, GIT, Jenkins, Code Quality & Security Plugins, Maven, Artifactory, Terraform, Ansible/Chef/Puppet, Spinnaker, etc.

• Well-versed with Storage, Networks and Storage Networking basics which will enable you to work in a Cloud environment.

•  Experience : 5+Years

• Job Location : Remote/Pune

We are looking to hire a Full-time, Remote (India) Backend engineer with a flair for writing full stack code to help create a SAAS product from the ground up in a niche industry.
This will be the v2.0 of an existing legacy platform with paying customers. This position is within the first few hires in the founding team of the revamped company.
We are on a mission to build a truly world class product and deliver at high speeds with high quality.

Read on and apply for the job if you are a doer, likes no BS, think you're competent enough to get things done, wants some quiet time every day, wants to make a difference, values work life balance and enjoy life outside work.

Experience -

At least 3 to 4 years building scalable SAAS applications in the cloud. It would be great to showcase anything progressive. Education from premier institutions, git contributions, tech blogs, volunteering, pet projects, etc.

Responsibilities -
- Architect, write, deploy and own the (SAAS) product from a technical standpoint working closely with other devs on the team
- Create and deliver the product end-to-end all the way to the user
- Write highly performant code and continuously measure performance and make the application better based on benchmarks
- Debug production issues and keep the application quality high always
- Assist with hiring more people when the team grows
- Pick up any appropriate work as in any early-stage company

General Skills Needed -

- Should be able to build and deploy multi-tenant SAAS applications end to end
- Need to have a technology-agnostic mindset. Should be able to easily pick up any new technology based on the use case.
- Should be an expert software craftsman/craftswoman. Must own the code and be proud of what you build.
- Write well thought out, well-tested code with extensive unit tests and integration tests so that the addition of future features is easy.
- Must know cloud deployment concepts and be comfortable creating and maintaining cost-effective cloud deployment strategies. AWS experience highly preferred.
- Must be able to design and architect simple, market-tested yet highly scalable solutions
- Must be able to quickly iterate and produce working software at a high speed. Must not be shy to scrap and rebuild when there is a need
- Must be appreciative of documentation and write well-documented code and technical documentation alongside

Technical Skills Needed -
- Expert level knowledge in Python and Django. We are a Python/Django/Javascript/ReactJs/AWS shop.
- Must have good knowledge/experience in creating cost-efficient and scalable cloud deployments (AWS preferred)
- Must have good knowledge of industry-standard design patterns and tools
- Must have a good understanding of various frameworks on authentication and authorization, billing and metrics
- Some experience in data analytics and reporting - creating reports based on the data collected and deliver to the frontend
- Expertise with Frameworks

1. Django, or similar backend frameworks
2. PostgreSQL, MySQL, any NoSQL or other database technology

Perks -

- Opportunity to build a SAAS product from the ground up. Lots of challenges to tackle on
- Work remotely from anywhere within India
- Emphasis on work-life balance and professional development
- Flexible work hours and a lot of autonomy
- Work with a very informal team collaborating over slack. No meaningless meetings. Focus on getting things done and not hours put in
- Opportunity to grow the team with the company
- Market salary and a yearly bonus outside the salary based on company + individual performance
- Generous PTO plan