Source description
About the role
backend ownership
you have shipped production backend systems that other teams and customers depend on - not only scripts or one-off jobs
you are comfortable owning a bet from ticket to production - scoping, implementation, monitoring, and iteration
you can hold api design, data model, async workflows, and deployment in mind at once without losing the customer outcome
product minded
you tie technical work to customer and roadmap impact - you ask when and why is unclear instead of guessing
you prefer small, reviewable PRs and measurable rollout over large surprise diffs
you treat auth, migrations, and customer-domain routing as high-risk paths that deserve extra review and a clear rollback story
ai native
you have built or operated software where LLMs or AI pipelines are part of the product path - code generation, orchestration, evals, cost, testability and reliability included
you care about quality, cost, and failure modes of AI-assisted flows (latency, retries, queues, human-in-the-loop where needed)
backend capabilities
you have worked on Node.js and/or Python services in production at meaningful traffic, data volume, or workflow complexity
you are comfortable on AWS-shaped systems - lambdas, api gateway, ecs, rds postgres, sqs, step functions, secrets - or you ramp quickly with our stack
you know how to maintain reliable systems while shipping fast - observability (e.g. Sentry), sane defaults, and pragmatic tradeoffs
you know how to build and ship ci/cd pipelines and safe deploy patterns for the services you own
craft
you treat and nurture your code like a piece of art, with the right balance of simplicity and complexity, without sacrificing speed
you have a high bias to action (run those POCs with cursor/claude code), and a low bias to over-engineering
human
you build trust with PMs, designers, and engineers - async updates in Slack, threads not @channel noise
you admit what you do not know and pull in the right owner (buddy, infra, security) early
you explain complex ideas clearly in writing - specs, PR descriptions, and docs
you hold 3+ years of experience
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