Senior Backend Engineer

DuckDuckGo; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); Remote; USD 171,000 - 209,000; Full time

Job summary

DuckDuckGo, a remote-first company, seeks a Senior Backend Engineer to own and advance backend systems powering our privacy-focused products. You will contribute across Perl 5, Go, and Node.js, delivering reliable, scalable code while mentoring colleagues and aligning with product goals.

Ideal candidates bring 7+ years of backend experience, strong CS fundamentals, and a data-driven mindset to inform architectural choices.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience focused on backend systems powering consumer-facing products.
• Familiarity with AI agent tooling, evaluation frameworks, RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering.
• Strong understanding of data structures and algorithms; able to develop and improve code.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with mentoring experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex backend projects across key company-wide objectives.
• Write pragmatic, performant, testable code using Perl 5, Go, and Node.js.
• Collaborate remotely with peers and mentor other engineers over time.
• Solve product issues affecting the all-in-one privacy solution.

Skills

Backend systems

Go

Node.js

Perl 5

Mentoring

Data-driven analytics

Communication

Tools

Perl 5

Go

Node.js

Job description

Senior Backend Engineer

• Salary: $190k – $190k
• Location: Remote (Everywhere)
• Experience: 7 years of exp
• Job Type: Full Time

About the job

Who We Are

Hi, we're DuckDuckGo, the online protection company and remote-first team of 400+ on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. Founded in 2008 and profitable since 2014, our annual revenue is in the hundreds of millions USD and millions use our browser on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, our search engine, and the DuckDuckGo subscription. We also offer private, useful, and optional AI, including Duck.ai, which lets you chat privately with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AIs, all in one place.

Our culture of trust, inclusivity, and empowered project management underpins everything we do, where each team member takes full ownership of their projects, from scoping and execution to postmortem. If you're seeking end-to-end ownership of your work, you've come to the right place!

Your Team and Role

Working on the Backend Functional Team, you'll lead complex projects across key company-wide objectives. Using Perl (Version 5), Go, and Node.js, you'll write pragmatic, performant, testable code that works consistently, and work on related projects. Recent projects include:

• Implementing AI-assisted answers and integrating them into our Search product while maintaining our privacy-first approach
• Delivering improvements to Duck.ai to help us make it a competitive AI chat alternative for both free and paying users
• Implementing sophisticated data processing pipelines that maintain search relevancy

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you'll collaborate remotely with your peers and take responsibility for solving product issues impacting our all-in-one privacy solution, whether large or small. In time, you'll formally mentor other engineers, supporting their career growth and the growth of the Backend Team at DuckDuckGo.

About You

• 7+ years of professional experience, primarily focused on backend systems that power consumer-facing products
• Product acumen to reason about technical tradeoffs in terms of user impact
• Familiarity with AI agent tooling: evaluation frameworks, RAG pipelines and prompt engineering
• A fundamental understanding of complex data structures and algorithms — you can develop and apply new solutions and confidently navigate and improve existing code.
• Data-driven analytical skills for decision-making, stakeholder alignment, and experiment-oriented delivery
• Solid project management abilities
• Excellent written and verbal communication to validate and articulate decisions
• Previous experience leading and mentoring experienced engineers, supporting their career goals, and unlocking their potential.

Compensation

This role is paid on a regional pay scale, in local currency, and stock options:

• United States: $190,500 USD annually
• United Kingdom: £134,600 GBP annually
• Canada: C$253,500 CAD annually
• Europe/Rest of World: €157,350 EUR annually

In Spain, pay is expected to transition to the EUR scale on January 1, 2027, and in other Europe/Rest of World countries on February 1, 2027.

Compensation is transparent across the organization, and all team members within the same professional level and global region receive the same compensation.

Eligibility for company-sponsored health benefits is limited to team members based in the United States. This program does not extend to team members located in other countries, such as Canada or the UK.

Our Team Member Support Guide explains how we prioritize your wellbeing including paid parental leave, office setup, and co-working allowances.

Hiring Process

Hiring works best when it's a two-way street. Learn how we help you get to know DuckDuckGo, envision your future role here, and find out more about how we hire.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

DuckDuckGo provides equal work opportunities to all team members and applicants, and it prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, caste, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by our policies or federal, state, or local laws.

We want to ensure that our hiring process is accessible. If you need reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process because of a medical condition or disability, please send an email to [emailprotected] to let us know the nature of your request.

Please note that:

• You'll be required to attend meetings on camera via video conferencing
• Expect to travel at least two times a year: once for our all-hands meetup and again for a team retreat (each around 4-5 days). While extenuating circumstances may impact attendance, everyone is strongly encouraged to attend.
• While we offer a flexible work arrangement with no core hours, expect an average full-time commitment of 40 hours per week.
• A successful candidate must pass a background check as a condition of joining the team.

By applying for this role, you confirm that all information submitted is accurate and complete. You further acknowledge that providing false or fraudulent information during the application process is cause for denial of an offer, revocation of any existing offer, or other adverse action, up to and including termination after the start of your commencement of work.

Disclosure Statement: Use of AI in Hiring Process

As part of our commitment to enhancing our recruitment process, we utilize artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist in reviewing and summarizing job applications and test projects, including those tools integrated into our recruitment vendor platforms. We use AI to flag potentially fraudulent applications, analyze and summarize applicants' experience, interviews, and project performance, and help streamline our selection process.

Key Principles:

Data Privacy: All information provided in your application will be handled in accordance with our Recruiting Privacy Policy. We ensure that your personal information is protected and used solely for recruitment purposes.

Human Oversight and Accountability: The AI technology is designed to support our hiring team by providing insights and summaries of applications and evaluations of test projects against scoring rubrics. All final evaluations and hiring decisions, however, will be made by our hiring team, who will consider the AI's input alongside other factors.

Transparency: We believe in transparency regarding our hiring practices. If you have any questions about how AI is used in our recruitment process, please feel free to reach out to us.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge and consent to the use of AI technology in our review process. If you would like to request an alternative selection process, please contact us as at [emailprotected]. Thank you for your interest in joining DuckDuckGo!