Senior Backend Engineer

Kodanorth; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Koda North is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and improve the backend systems behind business-critical web applications, client platforms, internal tools, integrations, and data workflows.

This role focuses on service architecture, API design, database modeling, and system reliability, with emphasis on secure, scalable REST services and production stability. Collaboration with product, frontend, QA, DevOps, and clients is essential.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional backend engineering experience
• Strong understanding of service architecture, API design, data modeling, and system design
• Professional experience with modern backend languages, including Python and Java
• Experience building secure, scalable REST APIs and backend services
• Strong experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQL Server
• Experience with authentication, authorization, validation, secure coding, and error handling
• Experience with background jobs, queues, scheduled tasks, or asynchronous processing
• Strong debugging skills across application code, APIs, databases, logs, and production systems
• Experience with Git, code reviews, technical documentation, and team-based engineering workflows
• Ability to evaluate technical tradeoffs and make practical architecture decisions
• Clear communication with US-based teams, clients, and stakeholders
• Strong ownership mindset from technical planning through release and long-term maintenance

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain reliable backend services and application systems
• Own backend architecture, service design, API contracts, and data flow
• Build secure REST APIs, internal services, integrations, and backend workflows
• Design database schemas, queries, indexes, migrations, and data access patterns
• Improve system performance, reliability, scalability, and maintainability
• Develop background jobs, scheduled processes, queues, and asynchronous workflows
• Implement secure authentication, authorization, validation, and error handling patterns
• Debug complex production issues across services, APIs, databases, logs, and infrastructure
• Refactor legacy backend systems and reduce technical debt safely
• Collaborate with product, frontend, QA, DevOps, and client-facing teams
• Review backend code, document technical decisions, and improve engineering standards
• Support deployments, monitoring, incident response, and ongoing production improvements

Job description

Koda North is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and improve the backend systems behind business-critical web applications, client platforms, internal tools, integrations, and data workflows.

This role is for an experienced backend engineer who can take ownership of service architecture, API design, database structure, system reliability, performance, security, and production support. You should be able to understand business requirements, make sound technical decisions, and build backend systems that are stable, maintainable, and ready for real-world use.

The ideal candidate has strong backend engineering experience across modern server-side technologies, with practical experience using Python and Java as part of their professional toolkit.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain reliable backend services and application systems
• Own backend architecture, service design, API contracts, and data flow
• Build secure REST APIs, internal services, integrations, and backend workflows
• Design database schemas, queries, indexes, migrations, and data access patterns
• Improve system performance, reliability, scalability, and maintainability
• Develop background jobs, scheduled processes, queues, and asynchronous workflows
• Implement secure authentication, authorization, validation, and error handling patterns
• Debug complex production issues across services, APIs, databases, logs, and infrastructure
• Refactor legacy backend systems and reduce technical debt safely
• Collaborate with product, frontend, QA, DevOps, and client-facing teams
• Review backend code, document technical decisions, and improve engineering standards
• Support deployments, monitoring, incident response, and ongoing production improvements

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional backend engineering experience
• Strong experience designing and building production backend systems
• Strong understanding of service architecture, API design, data modeling, and system design
• Professional experience with modern backend languages, including Python and Java
• Experience building secure, scalable REST APIs and backend services
• Strong experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQL Server
• Ability to design efficient schemas, optimize queries, and troubleshoot database performance
• Experience with authentication, authorization, validation, secure coding, and error handling
• Experience with background jobs, queues, scheduled tasks, or asynchronous processing
• Strong debugging skills across application code, APIs, databases, logs, and production systems
• Experience with Git, code reviews, technical documentation, and team-based engineering workflows
• Ability to evaluate technical tradeoffs and make practical architecture decisions
• Clear communication with US-based teams, clients, and stakeholders
• Strong ownership mindset from technical planning through release and long-term maintenance

Nice to have

• Experience in healthcare, healthtech, clinical workflows, patient systems, or compliance-aware environments
• Experience with HIPAA-conscious engineering, RBAC, audit logs, encryption, or privacy-sensitive data handling
• Experience with backend frameworks such as Django, FastAPI, Spring Boot, Express, NestJS, or similar tools
• Experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, or infrastructure-as-code
• Experience with event-driven architecture, message brokers, workers, or distributed systems
• Experience integrating EHR systems, payment platforms, CRMs, communication APIs, or enterprise tools
• Experience improving legacy backend systems, database performance, or production reliability
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, incident response, and root-cause analysis
• Experience mentoring engineers or leading backend architecture decisions
• Experience with AI-enabled backend workflows, data pipelines, automation, or reporting systems

Work hours: Full time