Senior Backend Architect for Scalable, AI-Driven Platform

HackerRank; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 172,000; Full time

Job summary

HackerRank is seeking a Senior Backend Software Development Engineer to drive the technical direction of core backend services and own the architecture as we scale the platform. You will mentor engineers across teams, shape API frameworks, and ensure reliability and high performance for a global user base.

You will lead large-scale refactoring, collaborate with frontend, infra, product and design, and contribute to engineering-wide standards while advancing AI-assisted development practices.

Qualifications

• Senior backend engineer with 3-6 years of experience building and operating production backend systems at scale.
• Expert in at least one modern backend programming language (e.g., Python, Ruby, Go, Java, or Node.js) with strong fundamentals across the stack.
• Proven ability to design and build distributed systems — you've made meaningful architectural decisions around service decomposition, data consistency, fault tolerance, and observability.
• Deep expertise with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL stores, including schema design, query optimization, and data modeling for high-throughput workloads.
• Strong understanding of caching strategies (Redis/Memcached), asynchronous messaging (Kafka/RabbitMQ), and event-driven architectures.
• Hands‑on experience with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure‑as‑code practices.
• Track record of leading technical projects from ambiguous problem statements through to production delivery.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and lead the implementation of complex backend systems and services that power core product experiences at scale.
• Define and drive technical strategy for your domain, making key decisions on system design, technology choices, and long-term architectural direction.
• Own the end-to-end reliability and performance of critical backend services, establishing SLOs, monitoring, and incident response best practices.
• Design scalable API frameworks and data models that serve as foundations for multiple product teams and external integrations.
• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives spanning multiple teams, coordinating with frontend, infrastructure, product, and design stakeholders.
• Identify and drive large-scale refactoring efforts, tackling tech debt and evolving legacy systems into modern, maintainable architectures.
• Mentor and grow engineers on the team through design reviews, code reviews, and hands‑on technical guidance.
• Contribute to engineering-wide standards, tooling, and processes that raise the bar for code quality and developer productivity.

Skills

Senior backend engineer experience

Distributed systems design

System design decisions

Mentoring engineers

Technical leadership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Redis

Memcached

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Job description

HackerRank is seeking a Senior Backend Software Development Engineer to drive the technical direction of core backend services and own the architecture as we scale the platform. You will mentor engineers across teams, shape API frameworks, and ensure reliability and high performance for a global user base.

You will lead large-scale refactoring, collaborate with frontend, infra, product and design, and contribute to engineering-wide standards while advancing AI-assisted development practices.