Senior Backend Engineer

Mathpix; United States; Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Mathpix is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join their team in Brooklyn, NY or Bay Area, focusing on building robust, scalable distributed systems. This role involves working on ambitious projects across multiple layers of the stack, ensuring mission-critical applications perform reliably.

The ideal candidate boasts 5+ years of experience with distributed systems, particularly in SQL databases, Kubernetes, and Docker. You'll design and optimize data-intensive systems while enhancing developer productivity through improved infrastructure.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience with distributed systems, message queues, and observability pipelines.
• Strong experience with SQL databases.
• Expertise in Kubernetes (K8s) and Docker.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed systems focused on scalability and resilience.
• Develop tools for observability and monitoring.
• Architect and optimize data-intensive systems.

Skills

Distributed systems

SQL databases

Kubernetes (K8s)

Docker

Microservices

Redis

Message queues (RabbitMQ)

Tools

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Location: Brooklyn, NY or Bay Area preferred

Mathpix is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer passionate about building robust, scalable distributed systems that power mission-critical applications. This role involves working across multiple layers of the stack, from databases and message queues to container orchestration and observability systems. You'll play a key role in shaping how our engineering teams build, scale, and operate services that need to perform reliably under real-world load.

The ideal candidate is excited about tackling complex technical challenges, designing resilient architectures, and improving developer productivity through better tooling and infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed systems with a focus on scalability, resilience, and maintainability
• Develop tools for observability and monitoring, enabling teams to quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve issues
• Architect and optimize data-intensive systems, ensuring high availability, performance, and consistency
• Enhance developer productivity by improving CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code

Required skills

• 5+ years of experience with distributed systems, message queues, and observability pipelines
• Strong experience with SQL databases
• Expertise in Kubernetes (K8s) and Docker
• Experience building and maintaining microservices in production, including service-to-service communication and API design
• Hands-on experience with Redis for caching and fast data access
• Knowledge of message queues (e.g., RabbitMQ) for distributed event-driven architectures

Nice to have

• Proficiency in Python, Node.js, Java, and/or Golang for building and maintaining APIs and services
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana)
• Experience at a startup or high-growth company; founding/early-team experience is a bonus
• Contributions outside of work — personal projects, open-source, articles, or blog posts