Staff Backend Engineer

Emumba; Toronto; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Emumba in Canada seeks a Staff Backend Engineer to design and build robust, scalable distributed systems using Python. You will contribute to cloud-native services, implement serverless components, and ensure security and reliability in our AWS environment.

You should have strong expertise in asynchronous programming, data pipelines, and RESTful APIs, plus experience with Flask or FastAPI and modern testing. Collaboration and clear communication are essential as you help scale core services.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on Python backend development experience, with cloud-native or serverless solutions (AWS preferred).
• Proven experience with distributed systems concepts — event-driven architecture, message queues, and scalable data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with asynchronous and concurrent programming.
• Strong testing and debugging skills across distributed architectures.
• Exposure to GenAI tooling or LLM-based systems is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build backend logic for event-driven systems using message queues and pub/sub services, with strong data processing and file-handling logic.
• Manage concurrent tasks efficiently in distributed environments using asynchronous programming techniques.
• Design and implement data processing pipelines across cloud storage, compute, and database services.
• Optimize applications for performance and scalability through caching, async calls, and latency reduction.
• Design and develop serverless applications and RESTful APIs using Flask or FastAPI.
• Follow cloud security best practices (IAM, encryption, network isolation), and implement authentication mechanisms (OAuth, JWT, or managed identity services).

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

Async programming

AWS

REST APIs

Testing & debugging

LLM tooling

Vector DBs

Tools

Flask

FastAPI

AWS services

Pub/Sub

Vector databases

Job description

Staff Backend Engineer

Department: Backend

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Canada

Description

We're looking for a highly skilled Staff Backend Engineer to design and build robust, scalable, and secure distributed systems. As a critical member of our engineering team, you'll use your expertise in Python to build cloud-native applications that power our core services. We currently operate in an AWS environment, and the core need is strong distributed systems and backend fundamentals.

Key Responsibilities

• Build backend logic for event-driven systems using message queues and pub/sub services, with strong data processing and file-handling logic.
• Manage concurrent tasks efficiently in distributed environments using asynchronous programming techniques.
• Design and implement data processing pipelines across cloud storage, compute, and database services.
• Optimize applications for performance and scalability through caching, async calls, and latency reduction.
• Design and develop serverless applications and RESTful APIs using Flask or FastAPI.
• Follow cloud security best practices (IAM, encryption, network isolation), and implement authentication mechanisms (OAuth, JWT, or managed identity services).

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• 5+ years of hands-on Python backend development experience, with solid exposure to cloud-native or serverless solutions (AWS preferred).
• Proven experience with distributed systems concepts — event-driven architecture, message queues, and scalable data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with asynchronous and concurrent programming.
• Strong testing and debugging skills across distributed architectures.

• Exposure to GenAI tooling or LLM-based systems, particularly RAG or agentic RAG architectures, is a plus.
• Experience integrating LLM APIs into backend services or workflows.
• Familiarity with vector databases and embedding-based search.

• Builder mindset: thrives on writing, debugging, and improving production code.
• Collaborative, humble, and open to feedback.
• Strong communicator who explains design decisions clearly.
• Influences through contribution, not hierarchy.