Backend Engineer

Zenteiq Aitech; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 4,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Zenteiq Aitech in Bengaluru is seeking a Backend Engineer to build and scale the AI platform’s backend. You will work on production-grade REST and gRPC APIs, distributed microservices, and event-driven architectures powering high-throughput AI and simulation workloads.

You'll own design to production, collaborating with ML, simulation, and platform engineers to deliver reliable services. The role emphasizes scalable systems, maintainability, and strong debugging skills in a fast-paced startup.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional backend development experience.
• Strong Python skills with async programming and FastAPI.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy (async), and migrations.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain REST APIs (FastAPI) and gRPC services, contract-first (OpenAPI, protobuf, JSON Schema).
• Build modular, reusable, type-safe, and well-tested backend services.
• Design PostgreSQL schemas with proper indexing, constraints, and migrations, and build durable, long-running workflows using Temporal.
• Build asynchronous processing using Kafka, Celery, Redis, or Airflow.
• Integrate backend services with storage such as GCS/S3 and internal platform services.
• Improve reliability through health checks, readiness probes, graceful shutdowns, and fault tolerance.

Skills

Backend development

Python (async)

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

Distributed systems

Kafka / Pub/Sub

Docker & Kubernetes

Redis

OpenAPI / Protobuf

SQLAlchemy (async)

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes (GKE)

Redis

Kafka

Pub/Sub

GCS / S3

Job description

We're looking for a passionate Backend Engineer to build and scale the backend systems that power our AI platform for engineering simulation. You'll work on production-grade APIs,distributed microservices, event-driven architectures, durable long-running workflows, and cloud-native infrastructure.

• It's a new platform, built from the first commit. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy solving
• complex backend problems, building highly scalable systems, and taking ownership of services
• from design to production. You'll collaborate closely with ML engineers, simulation engineers,
• and platform engineers to build reliable backend services capable of handling high-throughput
• AI and simulation workloads in a fast-paced startup environment.

What You'll Build

• Production-grade REST and gRPC APIs using FastAPI
• Distributed microservices powering AI and simulation workflows
• Durable, long-running workflows using Temporal
• Event-driven systems using Kafka or Pub/Sub

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain REST APIs (FastAPI) and gRPC services, contract-
• first
• Build modular, reusable, type-safe, and well-tested backend services
• Design PostgreSQL schemas with proper indexing, constraints, and migrations, and
• Build durable, long-running workflows using Temporal: workflows that run for hours,
• wait for human input, and resume after failures
• Build asynchronous processing using Kafka, Celery, Redis, or Airflow
• Integrate backend services with storage such as GCS/S3 and internal platform
• services

Distributed Systems

• Build resilient systems with retries, dead-letter queues, idempotency, and failure
• recovery
• Design stateless, horizontally scalable services with both synchronous and
• Keep each customer's data isolated at every layer of a multi-tenant platform

Platform & Cloud

• Work with GCP services such as GKE, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, and Pub/Sub,
• and with PostgreSQL run in our own containers on Kubernetes
• Implement caching strategies using Redis

Reliability & Observability

• Implement structured logging and instrument services with Prometheus and
• OpenTelemetry.
• Improve reliability through health checks, readiness probes, graceful shutdowns, and
• fault tolerance.
• Participate in production debugging, incident response, and performance optimization.

Required Skills

• 4+ years of professional backend development experience
• Strong Python skills, including async programming (async/await, concurrency,
• background workers) with FastAPI
• Experience with the modern Python service stack: Pydantic, SQLAlchemy (async),
• Alembic, pytest, and mypy
• Solid REST and gRPC API design, contract-first (OpenAPI, protobuf, JSON Schema)
• Experience with PostgreSQL, database design, and query optimization; familiarity with vector databases such as pgvector
• Good understanding of distributed systems and event-driven architectures, with
• Kafka or Google Pub/Sub
• Understanding of multi-tenant system design
• Experience with Redis for caching, task queues, or rate limiting
• Experience with Docker and deploying applications on Kubernetes (GKE preferred)
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions preferred)
• Understanding of rolling deployments, rollbacks, secrets management, and
• configuration management.

Good to Have

• Experience with Temporal or other workflow orchestration tools
• Experience with engineering simulation or physics: CAE tools, CFD or thermal
• analysis, solvers such as OpenFOAM or Ansys, or HPC
• Experience with the transactional outbox pattern and change data capture
• Experience with MCP or LLM agent frameworks such as LangGraph
• Experience with NoSQL and graph databases

What We're Looking For

• We value engineers who:
• Take ownership from design to production
• Build scalable, reliable, observable, production-ready systems
• Bring strong debugging, problem-solving, and system design skills
• Make pragmatic engineering decisions with long-term maintainability in mindCommunicate clearly and work independently in a fast-moving startup
• Are eager to learn new technologies and solve challenging backend problems

Why Join Us?

• Build cutting-edge AI infrastructure on a new platform, from the first commit
• Work on products that operate at scale
• High ownership, minimal bureaucracy, and real influence on architecture
• Collaborate with experienced Backend, ML, Platform, and Simulation Engineers
• Continuous learning through mentorship and challenging engineering problems

Required Skills

• Docker and deploying applications on Kubernetes (GKE preferred)
• Alembic, pytest, and mypy
• Kafka or Google Pub/Sub
• modern Python service stack: Pydantic, SQLAlchemy(async), - Strong programming skills in Python OpenAPI, protobuf, JSON Schema fast api PostgreSQL, database design, and query optimization
• Understanding of multi-tenant system design Redis for caching, task queues, or rate limiting