Software Engineer (Backend + AI Native)

hoichoi; Kolkata District; On-site; INR 900,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

hoichoi, India's leading Bengali OTT platform, seeks a backend-focused engineer in Kolkata to design, ship, and scale core revenue infrastructure. You will own API contracts, data models, and service boundaries for high-traffic systems that impact millions of users and revenue.

You'll work hands-on with AI-native development tools, lead architectural reviews, and partner with product, growth, content, and data teams to translate fast-moving business needs into robust backend solutions.

Qualifications

• 2–4+ years of backend engineering with production ownership.
• Strong fundamentals in at least one backend language and system design.
• Experience reading and reasoning about data models and API contracts.
• Ability to work in a fast-moving product team with changing requirements.
• Proficient with AI coding tools used on shipped features.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical decisions across live, high-traffic backend systems.
• Design and document API contracts, data models and service boundaries.
• Lead architectural discussions and design reviews for new capabilities.
• Diagnose production issues and implement robust fixes.
• Collaborate with product, growth, content, and data teams.
• Contribute to hoichoi Cortex with clean data flows.

Skills

Backend engineering

API design

Data modeling

System architecture

AI coding tools

Tools

Kafka

SQS

RabbitMQ

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Job description

hoichoi is India's leading Bengali OTT platform, the digital arm of SVF, Eastern India's largest media & entertainment company. We stream 650+ Bengali movies, 185+ originals, and 3000+ hours of content to an audience of ~250 million Bengalis worldwide. We're part of the wider SVF ecosystem alongside Sooper (AI-led micro-drama OTT) and LoglineAI (AI-native creative studio), and we're on a mission to entertain everyone in their native language.

The Role :

We are looking for engineers (backend heavy + AI Native) to join our tech team based in Kolkata. This role sits at the core of revenue infrastructure - covering payment orchestration, subscription lifecycle, and high-scale backend systems.

You won’t maintain systems. You’ll design, ship, and scale them. Every deployment impacts millions of users and real revenue.

Please note : This would be an onsite role from Kolkata

What You’ll Own + Key Responsibilities :

• Own end-to-end technical decisions - API contracts, data models, service boundaries, and integration patterns - across a live, high-traffic streaming platform.
• Think architecturally first: identify the right abstraction, lead the trade-off conversation, and document decisions that the broader team can reason about and build on.
• Use AI-native development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) as your default workflow - not as shortcuts, but as force multipliers where you own the output and know when to override.
• Lead technical design reviews for new capabilities, surfacing risks, edge cases, and cross-system dependencies before a single line gets committed.
• Diagnose and resolve production issues across backend systems - trace root causes, write clean fixes, and prevent recurrence through deliberate design choices.
• Partner closely with product, growth, content, and data teams to translate fast-moving business requirements into robust, maintainable backend solutions.
• Contribute to hoichoi Cortex - our central data aggregation and intelligence layer - by designing clean API contracts and data flows that connect content signals, user behaviour, and business metrics.
• Evaluate and integrate third-party services, LLM APIs, and external tools - making deliberate build-vs-buy-vs-compose decisions with clear justifications.
• Review code that a future-you would be proud to maintain: readable, testable, and defensible.

If you have :

• 2-4+ years of backend engineering experience with production ownership - at least one system that real users depend on and you were responsible for.
• Strong fundamentals in at least one backend language and comfort reasoning about system design, data modeling, and API contracts.
• Ability to read a system, understand its constraints, and make architectural recommendations - not just execute tickets handed down to you.
• Experience working in a fast-moving product team where requirements change mid-sprint and priorities shift without warning.
• Default user of AI coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, etc.) on real shipped features - with at least one concrete example where AI generated significant code that you evaluated, debugged, or chose to override.
• Comfort with ambiguity: you can move without complete information and know when to decide independently versus when to ask.

And (or) also have :

• Familiarity with streaming or media tech: CDNs, adaptive bitrate, DRM, or video processing pipelines.
• Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues (Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ), or distributed microservices.
• Prior work on data pipelines, analytics integrations, or internal developer tooling.
• Exposure to LLM APIs, prompt engineering, or AI-augmented product features shipped to real users.

Candidates must have an active GitHub or portfolio for skill evaluation.

Culture & How We Work

At hoichoi, the best idea wins, not the biggest title. We operate in small, cross-functional teams where content, product, growth, and tech sit close together, argue productively, and occasionally steal each other's snacks. It's a lot like a kitchen during a house party: slightly chaotic, everyone's doing three things at once, but somehow the food comes out great.

Ownership here isn't a buzzword; it's the default setting. If something's broken, you don't file a ticket and wait. You're the person who notices the printer is jammed and just fixes it instead of pretending you didn't see it. We ship fast, measure what works, and iterate. Think less 'perfect deck' and more 'let's see if real viewers actually care.'

When big moments arrive, we stretch. But we're equally serious about keeping the pace sustainable, because burnt-out teams build neither great products nor great stories. If that sounds like your kind of chaos, we should talk.