Senior Backend Engineer - AI-Driven Distributed Systems

Playlist; United States; On-site; USD 151,275 - 251,200; Full time

Job summary

Playlist seeks a senior backend engineer to design and operate distributed systems at scale, collaborating with product and design to bring features from ideation to deployment. You will own service design across boundaries, model data thoughtfully, and ensure reliability through testing and observability.

You’ll mentor teammates and advance responsible AI tooling usage. The role emphasizes building robust APIs, practical system design, and delivering high-quality software with a strong focus on

Qualifications

• 8+ years building and operating backend systems for high-traffic products.
• Strong system design skills across distributed systems, latency, throughput, and failure modes.
• Experience designing service-oriented architectures (microservices or modular monoliths).
• Proficient in OO languages (Java/Kotlin/C#) with solid SDLC and Agile practices.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product and Design to deliver features from ideation through deployment.
• Design and ship backend services and APIs end-to-end, owning system design and architecture decisions.
• Model and store data thoughtfully: schema design, indexing, migrations, and performance tuning.
• Promote engineering excellence with automated testing, code reviews, and observability.
• Mentor teammates and raise the bar for engineering rigor and responsible AI usage.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

OO languages (Java/Kotlin/C#)

SDLC & Agile

AI tooling mindset

Tools

SpringBoot

NetCore

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

DynamoDB

Redis

CI/CD tooling

JUnit/Mockito/TestContainers

Job description

Playlist seeks a senior backend engineer to design and operate distributed systems at scale, collaborating with product and design to bring features from ideation to deployment. You will own service design across boundaries, model data thoughtfully, and ensure reliability through testing and observability.

You’ll mentor teammates and advance responsible AI tooling usage. The role emphasizes building robust APIs, practical system design, and delivering high-quality software with a strong focus on