Senior Backend Engineer

BluJuniper; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision benefits

Flexible work environment

Opportunity to work on advanced AI/ML

Job summary

BluJuniper is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to build secure platform services for computer vision, audio ML, and NLP applications. This role focuses on backend systems across microservices, APIs, data schemas, and access control, with Go as the primary implementation language.

You will collaborate with product, AI/ML, DevOps, and security teams to deliver scalable, secure backend services and enable data sharing workflows across distributed systems.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional backend or systems engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust, or a similar language.
• Experience designing and operating cloud-based architectures on AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar.
• Strong understanding of microservice architecture, API design, inter-service communication, and distributed systems tradeoffs.
• Experience with data modeling, schema design, relational and/or non-relational databases.
• Experience designing authentication and authorization systems, including RBAC.
• Experience building secure backend services that support structured data exchange, schema-driven integrations, or controlled data-sharing workflows.
• Strong debugging and performance-analysis skills in production backend systems.
• Experience developing / modifying database schemas

Responsibilities

• Design and develop backend services using Go, C++, or a similar language, with primary implementation in Go.
• Integrate AI algorithms into the stack in a clean way.
• Develop user facing algorithms that make an impact.
• Build platform services that support configurable rules, workflow logic, auditability, and secure operational history.
• Develop and maintain data schemas, domain models, event structures, persistence strategies, and data access patterns across backend systems.
• Contribute to shared data exchange capabilities, including controlled data-sharing workflows and cross-environment integration patterns.
• Design service-to-service communication patterns, API contracts, event flows, and integration points between distributed services.
• Build backend infrastructure for authentication, authorization, role-based access control, and customer onboarding workflows.
• Build event-driven systems using Apache Kafka or comparable messaging technologies.
• Partner with product, frontend, AI/ML, DevOps, and security stakeholders to translate requirements into well-structured backend services.
• Improve system performance, scalability, reliability, and debuggability across production services.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, implementation planning, and security reviews.

Skills

Go

C++

Java

Rust

Microservices

AWS

API design

Distributed systems

Data modeling

RBAC

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

CI/CD

Job description

BluJuniper is an AI and optimization company building advanced software systems for complex operational environments. Our work spans cloud-native platforms, computer vision, natural language processing, secure collaboration, and mission-focused AI/ML applications. We are not a language model wrapper company.

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to help build secure platform services for a computer vision, audio ML, and natural language processing application. This role will focus on backend services that focuses on enabling these ML technologies to work seamlessly in the platform while being secure. Furthermore, this role will involve algorithm development.

Compensation

$160,000 - $225,000 per year

Compensation will be based on experience, location, and qualifications. BluJuniper offers competitive compensation and benefits for eligible employees. Employees are eligible for bonuses and stock options on top of salary.

About The Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design and implement backend services that support secure and reliable AI capabilities. You will work across microservices, messaging systems, data schemas, APIs, access control, and data-sharing workflows.

This role is ideal for an engineer with strong experience in Go, C++, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language who enjoys building production services, data models, and secure system-to-system integration patterns. Go will be the primary implementation language for this role.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop backend services using Go, C++, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language, with primary implementation in Go.
• Integrate AI algorithms into the stack in a clean way.
• Develop user facing algorithms that make an impact.
• Build platform services that support configurable rules, workflow logic, auditability, and secure operational history.
• Develop and maintain data schemas, domain models, event structures, persistence strategies, and data access patterns across backend systems.
• Contribute to shared data exchange capabilities, including controlled data-sharing workflows and cross-environment integration patterns.
• Design service-to-service communication patterns, API contracts, event flows, and integration points between distributed services.
• Build backend infrastructure for authentication, authorization, role-based access control, and customer onboarding workflows.
• Build event-driven systems using Apache Kafka or comparable messaging technologies.
• Partner with product, frontend, AI/ML, DevOps, and security stakeholders to translate requirements into well-structured backend services.
• Improve system performance, scalability, reliability, and debuggability across production services.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, implementation planning, and security reviews.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional backend or systems engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language.
• Experience designing and operating cloud-based architectures on AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar cloud platforms.
• Strong understanding of microservice architecture, service boundaries, API design, inter-service communication, and distributed systems tradeoffs.
• Experience with data modeling, schema design, relational and/or non-relational databases, and long-term data maintainability.
• Experience designing authentication and authorization systems, including role-based access control.
• Experience building secure backend services that support structured data exchange, schema-driven integrations, or controlled data-sharing workflows.
• Strong debugging and performance-analysis skills in production backend systems.
• Experience developing / modifying database schemas

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building rules engines, policy engines, workflow engines, audit services, or queryable event-history systems.
• Experience building backend systems for real-time collaboration, simulation, spatial platforms, command-and-control (C2) systems, or operational decision-support tools.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.
• Familiarity with secure software development practices, audit logging, secrets management, and least-privilege access design.
• Experience working in regulated, government, defense, or enterprise security environments.
• Experience working with computer vision, natural language processing, or AI/ML teams.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means you can turn broad platform needs into clean backend services. You can design data models thoroughly, build secure service interfaces, reason through data exchange patterns, and create systems that remain understandable as the platform grows.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for someone who is practical, security-minded, and comfortable working across product, infrastructure, and AI/ML teams. The ideal candidate can build dependable services without overcomplicating the architecture, and can communicate clearly about technical tradeoffs.

Location

This is a hybrid role based in Washington, DC.

Employment Type

Full-time.

Work Authorization and Clearance Eligibility

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. An active U.S. government security clearance is not required for this role. Candidates who currently hold, have previously held, or may be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance are preferred. Certain customer, contract, or regulatory requirements may require additional eligibility verification.

• Health, dental, and vision benefits for eligible employees.
• Flexible work environment.
• Opportunity to work on advanced computer vision, natural language processing, AI, optimization, and backend infrastructure problems.
• High-impact role with meaningful ownership over technical direction.
• Collaborative team environment with direct visibility into product and company strategy.

Equal Opportunity Statement

BluJuniper is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable law.