Backend Engineer – Real-Time Services

Job title: Backend Engineer – Real-Time Services Contract: 12 months with potential to extend or convert (W2 only, C2C not available, No 3rd parties) Location: Remote (US only) About the Role We’re looking for a backend engineer with strong experience in building and operating real-time, cloud-based systems. You’ll help design, maintain, and scale the backbone of online services used by millions of users. This is an opportunity to work on high-throughput, low-latency systems where uptime and reliability are critical. What You’ll Do • Design for Scale: Build backend services that support massive concurrency and low-latency performance. • Keep Services Live: Monitor, troubleshoot, and improve production systems to ensure reliability and stability. • Own the Lifecycle: Contribute across design, development, deployment, and ongoing operations. • Build APIs & Services: Develop distributed systems using REST, RPC, and GraphQL. • Leverage the Cloud: Work with AWS services, databases, messaging systems, and caching to deliver robust solutions. • Collaborate Broadly: Partner with DevOps, SREs, and product stakeholders to deliver reliable real-time features. • Champion Performance: Improve observability, optimize throughput, and design for fault tolerance. What You Bring • Experience: 4+ years of backend development, ideally with real-time, live, or consumer-facing systems. • Production Ops: Hands-on experience supporting and scaling live services, including monitoring and incident response. • Distributed Systems: Solid understanding of building services using REST, RPC, or GraphQL. • Backend Languages: Experience with any backend language (Java, Python, Go, C#, etc.) — you’ll be coding primarily in Java, but strong engineering fundamentals matter more than current Java experience. • Tech Stack & Cloud: Familiarity with cloud-based infrastructure (AWS, databases, messaging, caching) and CI/CD pipelines. • Problem-Solving: Skilled at debugging complex issues in production environments. • Collaboration: Strong communicator and team player with a focus on ownership. • Systems Thinking: Knowledge of scaling, fault tolerance, and reliability principles.