Senior Backend Architect & Engineering Lead

United States Digital Space LLC; United States; Hybrid; USD 164,000 - 245,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC seeks a Manager, Software Engineering to architect and lead scalable backend systems in a distributed environment. You will write code, shape architecture, and guide engineers to high standards across cross-functional teams in London-based operations.

You will drive design reviews, mentor engineers, and partner with Product and Design to plan iterations while ensuring security and reliability. This role emphasizes hands-on leadership and architectural excellence.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with ownership of large-scale backend systems in production.
• 3+ years of hands-on technical leadership (as Tech Lead or Manager) with track record of leading complex, cross-team projects while contributing to code and design.
• 5+ years of experience with Golang (preferred) and/or Java, plus strong CS fundamentals.
• Deep understanding of AWS cloud-native architectures and services (ECS/EKS, Lambda, OpenSearch, DynamoDB, RDS, S3) and resilience patterns.
• Proficiency with microservices, API design, and event-driven systems, plus Docker/Kubernetes experience.
• Strong operational mindset: observability, monitoring, incident response, performance engineering, and security practices.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps workflows; Git-based trunk/branch strategies.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management; ability to drive alignment across teams.

Responsibilities

• Architect and design scalable, resilient backend systems and platforms in AWS with a focus on reliability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Contribute hands-on to key initiatives including design reviews, prototyping, coding, performance tuning, and debugging while mentoring engineers.
• Lead cross-team technical initiatives; drive design forums, guardrails, and ensure high-quality delivery via code reviews and automation.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data Science, and Platform teams to define scope, milestones, and de-risk execution for iterative releases.
• Own design of APIs and microservices, including REST and event-driven patterns, with versioning and backward compatibility.
• Advance operational excellence by defining SLOs, improving observability, hardening on-call procedures, and incident response.
• Solve complex distributed system challenges with pragmatic decisions and tradeoffs.
• Document architectural decisions, service ownership, and runbooks to enable long-term scalability.
• Foster team growth through mentoring, clear expectations, and onboarding diverse talent.

Skills

Golang

Java

Distributed systems

AWS

Microservices

APIs

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Leadership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Git

OpenSearch

DynamoDB

RDS

S3

Job description

United States Digital Space LLC seeks a Manager, Software Engineering to architect and lead scalable backend systems in a distributed environment. You will write code, shape architecture, and guide engineers to high standards across cross-functional teams in London-based operations.

You will drive design reviews, mentor engineers, and partner with Product and Design to plan iterations while ensuring security and reliability. This role emphasizes hands-on leadership and architectural excellence.