Backend Engineer, Application & Data Platform
Location: Remote
Compensation: Flexible (commensurate with experience)
Type: Full-Time (40 hrs/week) | Min. 4–5 hours daily overlap with US Eastern Time (ET)
About the Role
Our client, a U.S. lending firm, is replacing spreadsheets and disconnected systems with an internal application platform. They are hiring a backend engineer to own that platform’s backend: a C#/.NET application on Azure, a SQL Server data layer, Python data pipelines, and LLM-powered document processing. New business modules are added to the platform over time, and it is built to be used by both staff and AI agents.
The team uses AI coding agents extensively. You will design solutions, guide AI-assisted implementation, and take full ownership of correctness, security, and production reliability. AI accelerates engineering; it does not replace engineering judgment.
You will work directly with the firm’s Head of Technology Transformation, with real influence over architecture and engineering practices.
What You’ll Do
Primary Focus (80%)
- Build and ship features end to end across the ASP.NET Core and Entity Framework Core backend and the React and TypeScript front end.
- Design APIs and data models for a shared platform that new business modules plug into.
- Own the SQL Server layer: schemas, stored procedures, and migrations used by the application and AI agents.
- Build reliable background jobs on Azure Functions and Service Bus, and maintain the Python data pipelines and LLM-based document extraction.
- Enforce role-based authorization and protect sensitive borrower and financial data.
- Own testing, monitoring, and incident response for what you ship, and review AI-generated code, especially sign-in, role checks, and deploy scripts.
Secondary Focus (20%)
- Make and review Terraform changes to the Azure environment.
- Handle VM patching and Azure service upgrades, and assess their impact on the platform.
What We’re Looking For
- 3–4+ years of professional backend engineering experience on production systems.
- Strong C#/.NET (ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core) and Python; working knowledge of React and TypeScript.
- Advanced SQL Server skills: data modeling, query optimization, and indexing.
- A track record of designing, deploying, and maintaining backend services or modules independently, and troubleshooting them in production.
- Experience securing REST APIs and implementing role-based authorization inside an application.
- Effective use of AI coding assistants, with the judgment to review generated code critically and own its correctness.
Ways to Stand Out
- Cloud architecture and infrastructure experience: Azure services (App Service, Functions, Service Bus, Front Door, VNets, Key Vault), Entra ID and managed identities, Terraform, and running production VMs. Strong experience on another cloud also counts.
- Production experience with LLM APIs: structured extraction from documents, validating model output, and measuring accuracy.
- Experience building MCP servers, and with the Claude Agent SDK or Anthropic’s Claude API SDKs.
- Experience in lending, real estate, banking, or fintech.
- CI/CD with GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, or VBA for legacy Excel data.
Candidate Profile & Mindset
- Broad & Adaptable: Happy switching between API code, database design, and Azure infrastructure in the same afternoon.
- Comfortable with Ambiguity: Able to take loose operational requirements and turn them into a working, testable MVP quickly.
- Ownership: Treats production services as their own: notices when something breaks before users do and fixes the root cause.
- Proactive Communicator: Highlights risks or uncertainties early, asks sharp questions, and takes pride in clean execution.
Candidate Profile & Mindset
- Broad & Adaptable: Happy switching between database design, Python scripts, and Azure infrastructure in the same afternoon.
- Comfortable with Ambiguity: Ability to take loose operational requirements and turn them into a working, testable MVP quickly.
- Proactive Communicator: Highlights risks or uncertainties early, asks sharp questions, and takes pride in clean execution.