Backend Engineer | $100/hr | Remote

About the role

Backend Engineers, API Developers & Secure Systems Specialists. Remote AI Project We are seeking experienced Backend Engineers, API Developers, Distributed Systems Engineers, Platform Engineers, and Security-Focused Software Engineers to create realistic, challenging coding tasks that evaluate how advanced AI systems solve real software engineering problems. This opportunity is ideal for backend engineers who can take a production-style software problem and turn it into a realistic, challenging, automatically verifiable coding task, then determine whether a proposed solution is genuinely correct, performant, maintainable, and secure. We are a referral partner of the client.

Responsibilities

• Create realistic backend software engineering tasks for AI systems to solve
• Design feature implementation challenges based on production-style services
• Create debugging and bug-fixing tasks
• Develop API-focused engineering scenarios
• Build tasks involving service logic, databases, concurrency, networking, and distributed systems
• Design security-focused backend tasks where relevant
• Implement deterministic verifiers and automated graders
• Ensure verifiers accept multiple reasonable correct implementations
• Ensure incorrect, partial, brittle, or shortcut solutions fail verification
• Create hidden test cases and edge cases
• Build golden reference solutions
• Review task difficulty, realism, and technical correctness
• Identify unintended shortcuts or exploitable grader behavior
• Debug test failures and environment issues
• Refactor task environments for reliability and reproducibility
• Review AI-generated code for correctness, maintainability, performance, and security
• Document task expectations and verification logic clearly

Qualifications

Relevant backgrounds include: Backend Engineers, Backend Software Engineers, Senior Backend Engineers, Backend Developers, Software Engineers, Server-Side Engineers, API Engineers, and Application Engineers. We also welcome: Platform Engineers, Infrastructure Engineers, Distributed Systems Engineers, Cloud Engineers, Systems Engineers, Microservices Engineers, Developer Platform Engineers, and Production Engineers. Language-specific backgrounds may include: Java Engineers, Python Backend Engineers, Go Engineers, Golang Developers, Rust Engineers, Node.js Engineers, TypeScript Backend Engineers, C++ Engineers, and JVM Engineers. Architecture and systems backgrounds may include: Software Architects, Backend Architects, Solutions Engineers, Technical Leads, Staff Engineers, Principal Engineers, and Engineering Leads with strong hands-on coding experience. Security-focused backgrounds may include: Application Security Engineers, Product Security Engineers, Security Software Engineers, DevSecOps Engineers, Security Researchers, Penetration Testers, Vulnerability Researchers, Security Consultants, and Secure Code Reviewers with strong software development ability.

Requirements

• Strong professional experience in backend or server-side software engineering
• Proficiency in at least one backend language such as Java, Node.js, Go, Rust, TypeScript, Python, or C++
• Track record building scalable services or APIs
• Strong debugging ability
• Experience implementing non-trivial backend features
• Experience with automated testing
• Strong code-review instincts
• Experience improving performance or resolving system bottlenecks
• Strong understanding of algorithms and data structures
• Ability to work effectively within existing codebases
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong written and verbal technical communication
• Strong attention to detail
• Comfortable working independently in a remote environment

• REST APIs
• GraphQL
• gRPC
• RPC systems
• Microservices
• Monolithic applications
• Service-oriented architecture
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Session management
• Background jobs
• Message queues
• Event-driven systems
• Caching
• Rate limiting
• Webhooks
• File processing
• Scheduling systems
• Business logic
• Data validation
• API versioning
• Service integrations

Preferred Background

• Experience with large-scale production backend systems
• Distributed systems experience
• Microservices experience
• High-scale API development
• Cybersecurity or application-security background
• Penetration