Lead Backend Engineer

About the role

The Lead Backend Engineer owns the growth and output of a backend engineering pod — hiring, developing, and managing a small team — while remaining a strong hands-on contributor and a voice in technical direction. This is a player-coach role: you’ll write code and review architecture alongside your team, not just direct it from a distance, while also partnering with Talent to build out the team and with Engineering leadership to shape where the backend goes next.

Responsibilities

• Influence technical direction and architectural decisions across backend systems - balancing pragmatism with long-term scalability
• Champion a bias toward action - prototype to resolve disagreements, ship incrementally, and avoid analysis paralysis on reversible decisions
• Model high autonomy for your team - make sound judgment calls without unnecessary approval layers, while remaining accountable for outcomes
• Continuously improve systems beyond your immediate scope - identify and fix inefficiencies, technical debt, or brittle abstractions wherever you find them, regardless of team ownership
• Build and implement RESTful APIs using Java (Spring Boot or related web frameworks) or Python (Flask, Django)
• Design and implement asynchronous service communication using RabbitMQ or AWS SQS/SNS
• Work with NoSQL databases like MongoDB for data modeling and storage
• Collaborate with Product, QA, and DevOps teams to deliver reliable, scalable features, representing backend engineering in cross-functional planning
• Write clean, testable, well-documented code with unit and integration tests - staying hands-on as an active contributor, not just a reviewer
• Set and uphold engineering standards and best practices across your team
• Manage, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers - owning hiring decisions, performance management, career development, and day-to-day team health
• Partner closely with Talent/Recruiting to define hiring needs, shape interview processes, and build out the backend engineering team as we scale

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience with Java and Spring Boot, including experience in a technical leadership or people management role
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
• Demonstrated experience managing, mentoring, and growing backend engineers, including hiring and performance management
• Proven ability to influence technical direction and drive architectural decisions at a team or organizational level
• Strong stakeholder management skills - able to represent backend engineering’s perspective persuasively in front of executives, PMs, and cross-functional partners
• Comfort operating in a fast paced environment - wearing multiple hats across engineering, hiring, and cross-functional work
• Experience partnering with Talent/Recruiting to build and scale engineering teams - defining roles, running hiring processes, and closing candidates
• Strong experience with building and consuming REST APIs
• Familiarity with MongoDB or other NoSQL database technologies
• Experience integrating and leveraging AI-assisted development tools such as Claude and Opencode to accelerate backend development, including code generation, debugging, and optimization of APIs and services
• Demonstrated ability to incorporate AI tools into the software development lifecycle, using Claude or Opencode for tasks like automated code reviews, documentation generation, and improving system design efficiency
• Solid understanding of Git, CI/CD workflows, and agile development practices
• Excellent debugging, problem-solving, and communication skills