Senior Backend Engineer for Growth & AI-Powered Systems

Dept; New York, California (NY, MO, IL); Hybrid; USD 122,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

PTO

Paid Company Holidays

Job summary

DEPT is hiring a Senior Engineer to own backend services and APIs for global brands, with occasional frontend work. You will design, implement, and ship features, resolve ambiguous specs, and collaborate with product, design, and marketing teams.

We value code quality, performance, and pragmatic trade-offs. You’ll work across cloud infrastructure, AI tooling, and modern frontend when needed, while mentoring engineers and contributing to open source or talks.

Qualifications

• Proven experience building production backend systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Experience designing and integrating APIs and third-party systems.
• Solid knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Familiarity with frontend development (Angular/Typescript).
• Experience with at least one major cloud provider (GCP/AWS/Azure).
• Daily use of GenAI productivity tools in development workflows.
• Understanding of core LLM concepts.
• Git, Agile processes, and CI/CD tooling.
• Ability to self‑direct and seek help when needed.
• Track record of getting sh*t done in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience mentoring engineers.
• Exposure to agent development frameworks.
• Contributions to open source or conference talks.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy scalable backend services and APIs for global brands with ownership of workstreams.
• Turn incomplete specs into clear requirements, tasks, and stories with estimates.
• Participate in technical design of systems, schemas, and pipelines; advise on architecture and infra decisions.
• Integrate third-party APIs and design contracts for frontend teams and services.
• Conduct code reviews to raise quality and mentor teammates.
• Surface blockers and risks early for course correction.
• Advocate for testing, security, performance, and CI/CD best practices.
• Collaborate with client stakeholders via email, calls, and in person; create demo content.
• Apply AI capabilities to client work and develop reusable templates and guidance.
• Share learnings internally and externally when possible.

Skills

Python

APIs

Databases

Frontend (Angular/TS)

Cloud (GCP/AWS/Azure)

GenAI tools

LLM concepts

Version control

Agile/CI-CD

Mentoring

Open source

Agent development

Job description

DEPT is hiring a Senior Engineer to own backend services and APIs for global brands, with occasional frontend work. You will design, implement, and ship features, resolve ambiguous specs, and collaborate with product, design, and marketing teams.

We value code quality, performance, and pragmatic trade-offs. You’ll work across cloud infrastructure, AI tooling, and modern frontend when needed, while mentoring engineers and contributing to open source or talks.