Principal Backend Engineer – Architect Track

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Serbia.

📋 Description

• Assume responsibility for backend architecture as a proactive technical leader.

• Allocate approximately 50% of your time to hands-on coding, including reference implementations, critical components, and refactoring.

• Make intentional architectural decisions regarding the evolution of the backend.

• Address architectural inquiries on transforming the monolith, establishing service boundaries, designing for geo-distribution, and incorporating AI while avoiding technical debt.

• Establish backend architecture standards and make significant technical choices across various teams.

• Steer the transition from a monolithic structure to a more modular, service-oriented backend environment.

• Create service blueprints including API conventions, event-driven architecture patterns, testing protocols, observability strategies, and deployment methods.

• Design cloud architecture utilizing AWS and GCP, encompassing multi-region and geo-distributed designs.

• Oversee high-load, real-time systems, managing live class infrastructure, latency budgets, caching strategies, and capacity planning.

• Assess the optimal approach among buying, building, or assembling solutions—balancing the use of managed services, no-code tools, or proof of concepts.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 7 years of backend engineering experience with a strong emphasis on hands-on work in Python.

• Proven production experience with FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery, Postgres, and Redis.

• Extensive experience in AWS architecture (EKS, Lambda, RDS, SQS/SNS/EventBridge, etc.); familiarity with GCP is an advantage.

• Demonstrated experience in designing systems that are high-load, latency-sensitive, and geo-distributed.

• Practical judgment regarding buy vs. build vs. assemble options—considering managed services, no-code solutions, and agentic tooling as viable choices rather than shortcuts.

• A methodical working style characterized by research, weighing trade-offs, documenting decisions, and clearly communicating them to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Preferred experience with LLM integrations in production environments (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI), focusing on evaluation, cost, and reliability.

• Regular use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor) as a fundamental part of your development process.

🏝️ Benefits

• Fully remote work arrangement (core hours GMT+3).

• An opportunity to influence the future of AI-driven education.

• A vibrant, dynamic team passionate about creating innovative products.

• Unlimited vacation days—because we trust you to manage your time effectively.

• Bonuses and stock options—our growth is collective.