Back End Developer

FORT; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity

Remote across US & Canada

Job summary

FORT is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join a product-focused team building a scalable data platform at scale. You’ll design systems for large-scale warehouses, real-time activation, experimentation, and AI-powered features, collaborating with product teams and customers.

You’ll own architectural decisions, mentor peers, and tackle performance and reliability challenges in a fast-growing, remote-first environment across the US and Canada, with meaningful equity and opportunities to advance

Qualifications

• 6+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Deep experience designing production backend systems.
• Strong systems design fundamentals.
• Experience in high-growth startups or scale-ups.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable backend systems for a data platform.
• Resolve performance challenges in large cloud data warehouses.
• Optimise queries and pre-computation for speed.
• Enable customers to create and experiment with audiences.
• Mentor engineers and raise engineering standards.

Skills

Backend engineering

Systems design

Distributed systems

Real-time data

Generative AI

Product thinking

Mentoring

Education

Computer Science background

Tools

Data Warehousing

CDC

SQL/NoSQL

Job description

We're working with a high-growth, $1B+ technology company that's changing how businesses activate and use customer data through a combination of data infrastructure and AI.

Following significant growth and continued investment in its engineering organisation, they're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join one of their fastest-growing product teams.

The Why? (A Couple of Highlights)

Build a product at serious scale – Join a product area that's grown rapidly and now contributes around half of the company's revenue, with significant further investment planned.

Solve genuinely difficult backend problems – Work across distributed systems, data warehouse performance, real-time data, experimentation, and AI-powered product experiences.

High-growth environment – Join a business valued at $1B+, backed by some of the world's leading technology investors, with significant funding and ambitious plans for continued growth.

The Role

This is a product-focused backend engineering role where you'll design and build the systems behind a rapidly growing data platform.

You'll work on complex backend challenges involving large-scale data warehouses, performance optimisation, real-time audience computation, analytics, experimentation, and increasingly, generative AI.

We're looking for someone who can go deep technically while still thinking about the customer.

You'll be comfortable discussing architecture and distributed systems one day and working through a product specification or customer problem the next.

What You'll Be Doing

• Designing and building scalable backend systems for a rapidly growing data platform.
• Solving complex performance challenges involving some of the world's largest cloud data warehouses.
• Optimising queries and exploring techniques such as pre-computation to deliver faster, more interactive product experiences.
• Building systems that enable customers to create, analyse, and experiment with audiences and customer segments.
• Exploring real-time data activation, including technologies such as CDC and real-time audience computation.
• Developing backend capabilities that make increasingly sophisticated data workflows accessible to non-technical users.
• Exploring how Generative AI can improve the way customers interact with and act on their data.
• Working closely with product teams and customers to understand problems and turn feedback into scalable technical solutions.
• Contributing to architecture, scalability, reliability, and maintainability decisions across the platform.
• Mentoring other engineers and helping raise engineering standards as the team continues to grow.

What We're Looking For

6+ years of backend software engineering experience, ideally including substantial experience within high-growth technology companies.

A strong backend engineer with deep experience designing and building production backend systems — rather than someone primarily focused on frontend, full-stack, or infrastructure engineering.

Excellent systems design fundamentals, with the ability to reason about scalability, performance, reliability, and maintainability.

Experience working within a high-velocity startup or scale-up environment, ideally through a significant period of company growth.

Strong product thinking – you care about why something is being built as much as how it's implemented.

Comfortable working directly with product teams, writing or contributing to product specifications, and occasionally speaking with customers.

Evidence of taking significant ownership and increasing responsibility throughout your career.

Strong communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to learn quickly.

Ideally, you'll also have:

• A strong academic background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related technical discipline.
• Experience working with distributed systems and/or data-intensive applications.
• Experience solving complex performance and scalability challenges.
• A track record within highly regarded, engineering-led startups or technology companies.

What's in It for You?

• Remote working across the US & Canada.
• Join a technology company valued at $1B+ and backed by leading global investors.
• Work on a product that's already responsible for a significant proportion of company revenue and remains a major investment priority.
• Tackle difficult engineering problems across distributed systems, data infrastructure, real-time processing, and AI.
• Significant ownership and the ability to influence both technical architecture and product direction.
• Work alongside a highly technical engineering team with strong opportunities for mentorship and progression.
• Meaningful equity as part of the overall compensation package.
• Long-term opportunities to grow into broader technical leadership or engineering management.