Principal Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails) – AI-Driven, Remote

Kalkomey; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully distributed / work from home

401(k) match

Medical/Dental/Vision insurance

Maternity/paternity leave

Paid vacation and holidays

Wellness allowance & mental health day

WFH contribution to paycheck

Employee Assistance Program

Job summary

Kalkomey Enterprises is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails) to lead backend architecture and set long-term technical direction. This senior individual contributor role focuses on architecture, standards, and leveraging AI tooling to boost team outcomes.

You will own core backend systems architecture, collaborate with product and data teams, and mentor engineers while driving high-impact, scalable solutions in a fully remote setup.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with progression into senior technical leadership.
• Deep expertise in backend engineering, with strong, current command of Ruby on Rails.
• Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale, distributed systems that are maintainable, observable, and reliable in production.
• Strong command of software design principles — SOLID, DRY, domain-driven design, event-driven architecture.
• Experience leading technical design across multiple teams or product areas without direct authority.
• Demonstrated AI-forward practice: actively using AI tools to improve results and understanding where they help or don’t.
• Excellent written and verbal communication — able to explain architecture docs and technical specs to engineers and non-engineers.
• Comfort working in a remote, async-first environment with ownership and autonomy.
• Experience in principal, staff, or architect-level role at a product-driven technology company.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure/Platform practices (AWS preferred).
• Experience with experimentation platforms (Optimizely, LaunchDarkly) and product analytics tools (Mixpanel, Amplitude).
• Background in edtech, SaaS, or consumer-facing digital products.
• A bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• A genuine curiosity about the outdoors.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for our backend systems — documenting decisions that affect scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Lead design reviews for major backend initiatives and capture significant decisions as ADRs.
• Define and own the backend discipline roadmap aligned to the organization roadmap and partner with Product Leadership.
• Define and maintain engineering standards — repository health, performance, security, experimentation, and product analytics.
• Lead evaluations of third-party engineering tools and make the final call based on merit.
• Write production code on high-complexity problems and conduct thorough code reviews to improve code quality.
• Use AI tooling fluently to accelerate work and mentor others on its effective use.
• Mentor engineers through pairing, design reviews, and knowledge sharing via talks and playbooks.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

Backend architecture

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

AI tooling

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

AWS

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Optimizely

LaunchDarkly

Mixpanel

Amplitude

Job description

Kalkomey Enterprises is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails) to lead backend architecture and set long-term technical direction. This senior individual contributor role focuses on architecture, standards, and leveraging AI tooling to boost team outcomes.

You will own core backend systems architecture, collaborate with product and data teams, and mentor engineers while driving high-impact, scalable solutions in a fully remote setup.