Senior / Lead Backend Engineer

Medal.TV; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Medal's backend team in New York builds scalable, low-latency systems powering real-time features and user-generated content. You will architect APIs, evolve infrastructure, and mentor engineers across cross-functional squads to deliver robust services at scale.

The role emphasizes strong Java proficiency, distributed systems design, and cloud-based CI/CD practices, with opportunities to influence architecture and security.

Qualifications

• 5+ years backend engineering in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Java and building scalable microservices.
• Deep understanding of RESTful API design and distributed systems.
• Relational databases: MySQL or PostgreSQL with performance tuning and schema design.
• Experience handling thousands of requests per second.
• Comfort with cloud infrastructure (GCP or AWS), CI/CD, and infrastructure as code.
• Strong grasp of system design, architectural patterns, and security best practices.
• Strong communication and leadership skills for cross-team projects.
• Bonus: Redis, RabbitMQ or other message brokers; SRE/DevOps or DevSecOps experience.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build highly scalable, low-latency backend systems.
• Design and evolve critical APIs and backend infrastructure.
• Mentor engineers and drive cross-team technical decisions impacting millions of users.
• Collaborate with product, infra, and data teams to deliver reliable systems.
• Ensure security best practices and robust operational excellence.

Skills

Backend engineering

Java

Microservices

RESTful APIs

Distributed systems

MySQL/PostgreSQL

Performance tuning

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

Infrastructure as code

System design

Security best practices

Communication & leadership

Redis

RabbitMQ

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

GitHub Actions

CircleCI

Redis

RabbitMQ

Job description

About the Company

General Intuition is the frontier lab for acting in space and time. We build large action models and world models that can perceive, predict, and act across virtual and physical environments. General Intuition builds on the strength of Medal, the world's largest and fastest-growing platform for gaming clips, where millions of gamers capture, share, and discover new games every year. We recently raised $320M at a $2.3B valuation led by Khosla Ventures with participation from General Catalyst, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos, to discover the next generation of real-world intelligence.

The Role

Medal's backend powers everything from real-time in-app communications and storage of billions of user-generated clips to our ML-based feed and social features. You'll work closely with product, infra, and data teams to architect and build highly scalable, low-latency systems, helping design critical APIs, evolving our backend infrastructure, mentoring other engineers, and driving technical decisions that impact millions of users.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience, with significant time in production environments

• Strong proficiency in Java and hands-on experience building scalable microservices

• Deep understanding of RESTful API design and distributed systems

• Relational databases: Experience with MySQL or PostgreSQL, including performance tuning and schema design

• Experience building systems that handle thousands of requests per second

• Comfort with cloud infrastructure (GCP or AWS preferred), CI/CD, and infrastructure as code

• Strong grasp of system design, architectural patterns, and security best practices

• Strong communication and leadership skills, with the ability to drive cross-team projects

• Bonus: Redis, RabbitMQ, or other message brokers and caching systems; SRE/DevOps or DevSecOps experience

Our Stack

Electron, React, Redux, Styled Components & other modern web-based technologies
C# and C++ for native Windows recording & more
Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android
Java, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes for backend
Terraform, Salt, GitHub Actions, CircleCI for IaC and CI/CD