Senior Backend Engineer - Real-Time, Scalable Microservices

Medal; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 275,000; Full time

Job summary

Medal's backend powers real-time in-app communications and storage of billions of clips, feeding our ML-based recommendations and social features. You will collaborate with product, infra, and data teams to architect and build highly scalable, low-latency systems, designing critical APIs, evolving infrastructure, mentoring engineers, and driving decisions that impact millions of users.

The role requires 5+ years of backend engineering, strong Java skills, microservices, RESTful APIs, and

Qualifications

• 5+ years backend engineering experience with production systems.
• Strong proficiency in Java and building scalable microservices.
• Deep understanding of RESTful APIs and distributed systems.
• Relational DBs: MySQL/PostgreSQL with performance tuning.
• Systems that handle thousands of requests per second.
• Cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS), CI/CD, and IaC.
• System design, architectural patterns and security best practices.
• Strong communication and leadership to drive cross-team projects.
• Bonus: Redis, RabbitMQ, or other brokers and DevOps/SRE experience.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build highly scalable, low-latency backend systems.
• Design and evolve critical APIs and backend infrastructure.
• Mentor other engineers and drive technical decisions.
• Collaborate with product, infra, and data teams to support millions of users.

Skills

Java

Microservices

REST APIs

Distributed systems

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Cloud (GCP/AWS)

CI/CD

System design

Leadership

Redis

RabbitMQ

DevOps

Tools

Terraform

Salt

GitHub Actions

CircleCI

Kubernetes

Job description

Medal's backend powers real-time in-app communications and storage of billions of clips, feeding our ML-based recommendations and social features. You will collaborate with product, infra, and data teams to architect and build highly scalable, low-latency systems, designing critical APIs, evolving infrastructure, mentoring engineers, and driving decisions that impact millions of users.

The role requires 5+ years of backend engineering, strong Java skills, microservices, RESTful APIs, and