Senior Backend Engineer - Real-Time Sessions & Workflows

Avala; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Avala is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer for Sessions & Workflows in San Francisco. You will build serverless systems that orchestrate annotation sessions, match tasks to annotators, manage queues, and ensure quality at scale across our global workforce.

You will own the real-time workflow engine powering production labeling, design Lambda-based pipelines, optimize matching, and surface monitoring dashboards to track throughput and quality.

Qualifications

• 4+ years building production backend systems
• Strong TypeScript and Node.js experience
• Experience with serverless architectures (Lambda, SQS, Step Functions)
• Knowledge of PostgreSQL, Redis, and distributed systems patterns
• Experience with real-time systems or workflow orchestration

Responsibilities

• Design and build serverless functions (AWS Lambda, Step Functions) for session orchestration
• Optimize task matching algorithms that assign work based on skill, quality, and availability
• Build real-time monitoring dashboards for annotation throughput and quality metrics
• Implement workflow automation for multi-stage QC review pipelines
• Scale the sessions system to handle 10x growth in concurrent annotators
• Collaborate with operations teams in SF and Nairobi to optimize workforce utilization

Skills

TypeScript

Node.js

Real-time systems

Serverless architectures

Tools

AWS Lambda

AWS Step Functions

AWS SQS

PostgreSQL

Redis

Job description

Avala is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer for Sessions & Workflows in San Francisco. You will build serverless systems that orchestrate annotation sessions, match tasks to annotators, manage queues, and ensure quality at scale across our global workforce.

You will own the real-time workflow engine powering production labeling, design Lambda-based pipelines, optimize matching, and surface monitoring dashboards to track throughput and quality.