Senior Backend API & Platform Lead (Mobile)

Vuejobs; San Mateo, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 176,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Equity package

Generous PTO

401K matching

Job summary

Slickdeals is seeking a Senior II Backend Engineer to provide technical leadership and dedicated API support for iOS and Android apps. You will own complex backend initiatives, shape architectural direction, and collaborate across Mobile, Web, Product, Design, and Platform teams to deliver scalable consumer experiences.

You will design and deliver services powering mobile features, mentor engineers, and balance hands-on work with strategic leadership to evolve the Slickdeals mobile platform.

Qualifications

• Extensive backend experience for large-scale consumer apps.
• Strong PHP backend experience with a modern framework.
• Proven design/operation of high-traffic RESTful or GraphQL APIs.
• Deep understanding of API contracts, versioning, auth, caching, pagination, idempotency.
• Experience with relational databases and performance optimization (MySQL/PostgreSQL).
• Experience with token-based auth (JWT) and secure auth patterns.
• Experience with distributed systems and asynchronous processing (RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis).
• Experience with cloud platforms, containers, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD (GitHub Actions).
• Strong observability, monitoring, logging, and incident response skills.
• Ability to lead cross-team initiatives and communicate tradeoffs clearly.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and delivery of complex APIs and backend services for mobile apps.
• Own backend initiatives from discovery through rollout and production support.
• Partner with mobile engineers to define API contracts and release strategies.
• Influence backend architecture and establish reusable patterns across mobile products.
• Identify risks early and present practical options to engineers and product partners.
• Improve reliability, scalability, performance, security, and observability of backend services.
• Lead technical design reviews and raise engineering standards through testing and documentation.
• Diagnose complex production issues spanning mobile clients, APIs, data services, and infrastructure.
• Reduce technical debt and modernize legacy systems while delivering near-term features.
• Contribute to cross-platform API development when business priorities require it.

Skills

PHP

REST APIs

GraphQL

JWT auth

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

MySQL/PostgreSQL

Caching/Monitoring

Distributed systems

Tools

RabbitMQ

Kafka

Redis

GitHub Actions

Job description

Slickdeals is seeking a Senior II Backend Engineer to provide technical leadership and dedicated API support for iOS and Android apps. You will own complex backend initiatives, shape architectural direction, and collaborate across Mobile, Web, Product, Design, and Platform teams to deliver scalable consumer experiences.

You will design and deliver services powering mobile features, mentor engineers, and balance hands-on work with strategic leadership to evolve the Slickdeals mobile platform.