Lead Backend Developer, Distributed Systems (Remote)

movableink; United States; Remote; USD 103,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Financial benefits

Job summary

movableink is seeking a senior software engineer to lead the technical design and hands-on development of an orchestration platform coordinating real-time messaging decisions across workflows and channels.

You will take the system from prototype toward production, own key components through operation, and mentor other engineers while collaborating with product, ML, data, and engineering partners.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience focused on distributed systems.
• Experience designing, building, and operating highly available, concurrent, fault-tolerant services at scale.
• Strong architectural judgment for event-driven, stateful, real-time systems and the ability to adapt designs as requirements evolve.
• Experience with cloud backend services, container orchestration, and microservice or service-oriented architectures.
• Strong Python skills and knowledge of distributed systems concepts such as partitioning, replication, back-pressure, idempotency, and failure handling.
• Technical leadership skills, including design reviews, mentoring, production problem-solving, and clear communication of tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Set architecture and guide critical implementation choices as the platform moves from prototype to production.
• Build a scalable, event-driven, fault-tolerant system for high-volume, real-time decisions.
• Own components end to end, including deployment, monitoring, and incident response.
• Lead design reviews, resolve tradeoffs, and maintain high standards for system design, code quality, testing, and operations.
• Translate requirements with product, machine learning, data, and engineering partners into practical technical designs.
• Improve observability and incident response, take part in shared on-call, and mentor other engineers.

Skills

Distributed systems

Python programming

Architectural judgment

Leadership/mentorship

On-call / incident response

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

gRPC

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Elixir

Go

Scala/Akka

Clojure

Job description

Role overview

Lead the technical design and hands-on development of an orchestration platform that coordinates real-time messaging decisions across workflows and channels. You’ll take the system from prototype toward production, own key components through operation, and work closely with product, machine learning, data platform, and engineering partners. The role combines distributed systems architecture, implementation, operational responsibility, and technical mentorship.

Responsibilities

• Set architecture and guide critical implementation choices as the platform moves from prototype to production.
• Build a scalable, event-driven, fault-tolerant system for high-volume, real-time decisions.
• Own components end to end, including deployment, monitoring, and incident response.
• Lead design reviews, resolve tradeoffs, and maintain high standards for system design, code quality, testing, and operations.
• Translate requirements with product, machine learning, data, and engineering partners into practical technical designs.
• Improve observability and incident response, take part in shared on-call, and mentor other engineers.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience focused on distributed systems.
• Experience designing, building, and operating highly available, concurrent, fault-tolerant services at scale.
• Strong architectural judgment for event-driven, stateful, real-time systems and the ability to adapt designs as requirements evolve.
• Experience with cloud backend services, container orchestration, and microservice or service-oriented architectures.
• Strong Python skills and knowledge of distributed systems concepts such as partitioning, replication, back-pressure, idempotency, and failure handling.
• Technical leadership skills, including design reviews, mentoring, production problem-solving, and clear communication of tradeoffs.

Nice to have

• Experience with Elixir, Erlang, Scala/Akka, Go, or Clojure.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools or ML-driven decisioning and scoring systems.
• Experience with Kubernetes, gRPC, Kafka, or Google Cloud Platform.

Benefits and work setup

• The listed base pay range is CAD $147,300–$192,000 per year. The posting notes that bonus may apply and that pay depends on job-related skills and experience; medical, financial, and other benefits are also available.