Senior Backend Engineer: Foundations & Scalable APIs

Backstory; Town of Poland (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Backstory.ai is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own the foundational backend layer used by every product. You will design low-latency APIs, distributed services, identity and authorization, audit logs, and BI exports, partnering with Product to shape requirements and scale systems.

You will build data pipelines, observability, and internal tooling, advocate engineering best practices, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure consistent, high‑quality delivery across the

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional backend experience in an enterprise environment.
• 2+ years of programming in Python or Scala.
• Proven experience building and orchestrating microservices/SOA.
• Deep understanding of databases, caching, and low-latency design.
• Experience designing clean, scalable APIs with strong user focus.
• Experience with data synchronization from diverse sources and data pipelines.
• Ability to own legacy code and progressively refactor it.
• Strong automation mindset to reduce manual toil.
• Spark or big data processing experience is a plus.
• Strong communication with Product to challenge requirements and drive roadmap decisions.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain high-performance, low-latency APIs and distributed microservices.
• Own features end-to-end from requirements to production monitoring.
• Design and execute data pipelines with massive data volumes and guaranteed consistency.
• Maintain and improve features based on feedback and product needs.
• Advocate for engineering best practices including logging and tracing.
• Ensure observability with alerts, dashboards, and runbooks for production services.
• Build internal tooling to reduce manual ops and enable self-service.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, and Engineering.

Skills

Backend design

API design

Python/Scala

Microservices

Databases & caching

Data pipelines

Legacy code ownership

Automation

Spark

Product collaboration

Job description

Backstory.ai is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own the foundational backend layer used by every product. You will design low-latency APIs, distributed services, identity and authorization, audit logs, and BI exports, partnering with Product to shape requirements and scale systems.

You will build data pipelines, observability, and internal tooling, advocate engineering best practices, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure consistent, high‑quality delivery across the