Senior Backend Architect (Rails, AI-Driven)

Kalkomey Enterprises, LLC; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully distributed – remote work

401(k) match

Medical/Dental/Vision insurance

Paid vacation and holidays

Wellness allowance

Job summary

Kalkomey Enterprises, LLC is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to set technical direction for our Ruby on Rails backend and mentor a team across products and disciplines. This high-ownership role focuses on architecture, standards, and long-term health of systems.

You will collaborate with product, data, and platform teams to drive the backend roadmap and ensure scalable, reliable delivery while leveraging AI tooling to amplify results.

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 use AI tools to achieve results with sound fundamentals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to explain complex ideas to engineers and non-engineers.
• Comfort working in a remote, async-first environment with ownership and autonomy.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for our backend systems — document decisions and address architectural risk and debt.
• Lead design reviews for major backend initiatives and capture decisions as architecture records (ADRs).
• Define and own the backend engineering roadmap aligned to the org-wide plan and partner with Product Leadership.
• Define and maintain engineering standards — repository health, performance, security, experimentation, and analytics.
• Lead evaluations of third-party engineering tools and make final calls based on merit and fit.
• Write production code on high-complexity problems and conduct thorough code reviews to raise code quality.
• Use AI tooling fluently to accelerate work and show others how to leverage it effectively.
• Mentor engineers through pairing, design reviews, and knowledge sharing via tech talks and playbooks.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

Backend architecture

Distributed systems

AI tooling

Technical leadership

Code reviews

Communication

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

AWS

CI/CD

Job description

Kalkomey Enterprises, LLC is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to set technical direction for our Ruby on Rails backend and mentor a team across products and disciplines. This high-ownership role focuses on architecture, standards, and long-term health of systems.

You will collaborate with product, data, and platform teams to drive the backend roadmap and ensure scalable, reliable delivery while leveraging AI tooling to amplify results.