Backend Engineer

Tinybird; Spain (TX); Hybrid; USD 79,000 - 111,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Home office stipend €2,800

22 days holiday a year

Job summary

Tinybird is seeking a highly experienced Backend Engineer to build and operate complex systems. You will shape how backend services are exposed as part of the product, with a focus on performance, reliability, and observability.

You’ll work close to production, debugging incidents, improving system behavior, and collaborating with data and product teams. The role is remote-first, with occasional Madrid in-person work, and requires strong Python and SQL skills.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building backend services and distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python; comfortable debugging and improving observability.
• Familiar with SQL and real-time analytical systems; comfortable with async workflows.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate backend services exposed as product interfaces.
• Debug incidents near production, understand system behavior, and improve reliability.
• Collaborate with data, platform, and product teams to ship robust features.
• Balance speed with reliability, maintainability, and operational simplicity.

Skills

Python

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Observability

SQL

On-call readiness

Tools

ClickHouse

Job description

About Tinybird

At Tinybird, we help developers and data teams take flight by unlocking the power of real-time data to quickly build data pipelines and innovative data products. With Tinybird, you can effortlessly ingest multiple data sources at scale, query and shape it using the 100% pure SQL you already know and love, and publish results as low-latency, high-concurrency APIs for your applications to chirp about. Developers can create fast APIs, faster, what used to take hours and days now only takes minutes! Tinybird is the essential tool that data engineers and software developers have been waiting for enabling you to drive innovation with ease.

About the Product team

The Product team owns and evolves everything that customers interact with in Tinybird.

We turn the underlying platform into a cohesive, reliable, and easy-to-use product. We design and implement the interfaces, APIs, and workflows that our users interact with. But our work touches many layers of the software stack and we often contribute code to ClickHouse directly.

These articles will give you an idea of the kind of work we do:

• https://www.tinybird.co/blog/lightweight-deletes

• https://www.tinybird.co/blog/fixing-clickhouse-alias-dependency-bug

• https://www.tinybird.co/blog/smarter-deployments-with-alter

• https://www.tinybird.co/blog/when-not-to-migrate-your-data

• https://www.tinybird.co/blog/new-logs-explorer

What we are looking for

We are looking for a highly experienced Backend Engineer who enjoys building and operating complex systems, and shaping how they are exposed as part of the product.

You might be a good fit if:

• You have strong experience building backend services, distributed systems, infrastructure components, or high-volume production systems.

• You are highly proficient in Python. This is a must for this role.

• You are comfortable working close to production: debugging incidents, understanding system behavior, improving observability, and making services more reliable.

• You care about performance, reliability, cost efficiency, and operational simplicity.

• You are pragmatic: you can move fast when needed, but you know when stability, safety, and maintainability matter more.

• You take ownership, follow through, and make progress even when things are not fully defined.

• You like data and SQL, and you are curious about how real-time analytical systems work.

• You communicate clearly in writing. This matters because we work asynchronously, document decisions, write operational notes, and share context across teams.

• You use AI tools like Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, or others as a core part of your daily workflow, from building and debugging to exploring ideas, understanding unfamiliar code, and reviewing changes. Using them effectively has a clear impact on how you work and how fast you can move.

• You are fluent in English and Spanish. English is the main language we use at Tinybird, and Spanish is the day-to-day language of the Product team.

• You are willing to participate in on-call rotations, not only to keep the service healthy, but also to understand the real problems our customers and internal teams face.

How we work

• We are a remote company, committed to a remote-first culture, but we have found that being together in person, especially in our Madrid office, often helps us move faster, stay aligned, and solve hard problems more effectively. Every now and then, we try to meet in person and spend time together.

• We believe in ownership, transparency, and clear communication.

• We value engineers who can balance speed with reliability, and short-term needs with long-term platform health.

• We prefer documented decisions, explicit ownership, and operational practices that make systems easier to understand and maintain.

• We work closely with platform, support, customer success, and other engineering teams because our work sits at the intersection of user experience, backend systems, and data.

• We have few mandatory meetings, under 2h/week. We know that deep work requires focus.

• Check out our blog or follow us on LinkedIn to learn more about what matters to us.

€68,000 - €96,000 a year

This role includes both cash compensation and a stock options grant. You can find our typical starting salary ranges for this role listed above. The final offer within this range will take into account several factors, including candidate experience, qualifications, skills, business needs, and geographical location.

We also offer:

• 22 days of holiday a year (plus your birthday and public holidays).

• Freedom to work from wherever suits you best.

• We provide up to €2,800 to help you set up your home work space.

The Process

Our process is designed for efficiency, and to get you an answer in a few weeks since the first meeting. These are its stages:

• First contact meeting, where you will meet the Hiring Manager of the process.

• Live Technical Assessment (1h, live, sharing screen, with 2 people from the team). You’ll have to optimize a piece of code representative of the work we do, and talk through your decisions.

• Team Alignment meeting (45min, with other 2 people from the team) to talk about technology and team work.

• A last meeting with our CEO to go over culture-fit, long-term company vision, and any other questions you might have.

• We make you an offer. And that’s it!