Lead Backend Engineer

BluJuniper; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 125,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision benefits

Flexible work environment

Opportunity for meaningful technical ownership

Job summary

BluJuniper is hiring a Lead Backend Engineer to drive backend architecture and collaborate on advanced AI and optimization projects. This role requires deep expertise in Go and substantial experience in cloud-based technologies.

The successful candidate will design scalable, reliable backend services and mentor a team of engineers while ensuring a high standard of code quality. This hybrid position is based in Washington, DC.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience with cloud-based architectures.
• Experience with AI/ML platforms.
• Ability to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of backend services using Go.
• Architect and implement cloud-based microservice-oriented systems.
• Review code, mentor engineers, and set engineering standards.

Skills

Proficiency in Go

Experience in C++

Microservice architecture

Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Data modeling

Debugging and performance analysis

Communication skills

Education

7+ years of professional backend or systems engineering experience

Tools

Apache Kafka

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

BluJuniper is an AI and optimization company building advanced software systems for complex operational environments. Our work spans cloud-native platforms, computer vision, natural language processing, data infrastructure, secure collaboration, and mission-focused AI/ML applications.

Compensation

$125,000 - $225,000 per year

Compensation will be based on experience, location, and qualifications. BluJuniper offers competitive compensation and benefits for eligible employees.

About the Role

As Lead Backend Engineer, you will own major backend architecture decisions and guide the implementation of reliable, secure, and scalable services. You will work across microservices, data schemas, messaging systems, real-time media infrastructure, and access control systems. You should be comfortable operating at both the systems-design level and the code-review level.

This role is ideal for an engineer with strong experience in Go, C++, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language who enjoys building clean backend infrastructure, designing durable data models, and leading other engineers through complex technical work. Go will be the primary implementation language for this role.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of backend services using Go
• Own core backend work related to real-time communication capabilities, including WebRTC, LiveKit, SFU architectures, or comparable media platforms.
• Architect and implement cloud-based, microservice-oriented systems that are reliable, observable, secure, and maintainable.
• Design service-to-service communication patterns, API contracts, event flows, and integration points between distributed services.
• Develop and maintain data schemas, domain models, persistence strategies, and data access patterns across backend systems.
• Build backend infrastructure for authentication, authorization, role-based access control, and customer onboarding workflows.
• Build event-driven systems using Apache Kafka or comparable messaging technologies.
• Partner directly with computer vision, NLP, AI/ML, frontend, DevOps, and security stakeholders to translate requirements into well-structured backend architecture.
• Review code, mentor engineers, establish engineering standards, and help the team make sound technical tradeoffs.
• Improve system performance, scalability, reliability, and debuggability across production services.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional backend or systems engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language.
• Experience designing and operating cloud-based architectures on AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar cloud platforms.
• Experience with working on/with AI/ML platforms and communicating with AI/ML teams.
• Strong understanding of microservice architecture, service boundaries, API design, inter-service communication, and distributed systems tradeoffs.
• Extensive experience with data modeling, schema design, relational and/or non-relational databases, and long-term data maintainability.
• Experience designing authentication and authorization systems, including role-based access control.
• Experience leading technical projects, mentoring engineers, reviewing designs, and guiding implementation across a team.
• Strong debugging and performance-analysis skills in production backend systems.
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with WebRTC, LiveKit, or other real-time media streaming systems.
• Experience with Apache Kafka, event-driven architectures, message queues, or stream-processing systems.
• Experience building backend systems for real-time collaboration.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.
• Familiarity with secure software development practices, audit logging, secrets management, and least-privilege access design.
• Experience leading data modeling efforts for large distributed backend systems.
• Experience working in regulated, government, defense, or enterprise security environments.
• Experience with observability tooling, including structured logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means you can take technical requirements and turn them into well-designed backend systems. You can define clean service boundaries, create practical data models, make smart tradeoffs, and help other engineers execute with clarity. You are comfortable being accountable for architecture while still contributing directly to implementation.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for someone who is technical, practical, and collaborative. The ideal candidate is not only a strong backend engineer, but also someone who can raise the quality of the engineering team around them. You should enjoy building durable systems, simplifying complexity, and helping a team move quickly without creating unnecessary technical debt.

Location

This is a hybrid role based in Washington, DC.

Employment Type

Full-time

Work Authorization and Clearance Eligibility

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. An active U.S. government security clearance is not required for this role. Candidates who currently hold, have previously held, or may be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance are preferred. Certain customer, contract, or regulatory requirements may require additional eligibility verification.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision benefits for eligible employees.
• Flexible work environment.
• Opportunity to work on advanced computer vision, natural language processing, AI, optimization, and backend infrastructure problems.
• High-impact role with meaningful ownership over technical direction.
• Collaborative team environment with direct visibility into product and company strategy.

Equal Opportunity Statement

BluJuniper is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable law.