Backend Engineering Lead - Growing Global Startup

Role Overview

Robust and Maintainable Backend Development:

• Develop backend services with clear, well-structured, and maintainable code that supports long-term scalability.

• Design systems with future growth in mind, balancing performance and adaptability from the outset.

Codebase Optimization and Legacy Improvements:

• Review and enhance existing codebases by refactoring and optimizing for better efficiency, maintainability, and readability.

• Implement automated tests to ensure ongoing system stability and high performance during iterations.

Team Leadership and Developer Growth:

• Lead a backend-focused engineering group of approximately 4–6 people, supporting both technical execution and career development.

• Conduct regular one-on-one sessions to offer constructive guidance and create a safe, collaborative team environment.

• Promote a culture of open communication, mentorship, and continuous technical improvement.

Code Quality and Collaborative Practices:

• Take an active role in peer reviews, offering actionable feedback to improve code clarity and functionality.

• Share engineering best practices to raise team-wide development standards and consistency.

Requirement Clarification and Technical Planning:

• Partner with product and business stakeholders to interpret feature requirements and help shape viable implementation approaches.

• Contribute to designing backend architecture that aligns with product direction and can handle scaling needs.

• Anticipate potential engineering challenges early and provide thoughtful, pragmatic solutions.

Cross-Regional Engineering Collaboration:

• Work closely with distributed engineering teams in other regions to align on technical direction, collaborate on shared components, and exchange ideas for innovation.

Qualifications

Academic Background:

• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related discipline preferred.

Professional Experience:

• 5+ years in backend software development, including 1+ years in a team lead or technical leadership role.

Technical Proficiency:

• Hands-on experience with one or more backend programming languages (Java is strongly preferred).

• Solid understanding and application of object-oriented design principles.

• Experience with service-oriented or distributed architectures (e.g., microservices) is a plus.

• Comfortable working with relational databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and caching layers (e.g., Redis, Memcached).

• Familiar with source control workflows (e.g., Git) and CI/CD pipelines.

Communication and Teamwork:

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to effectively work across functions and time zones, while clearly sharing technical context and rationale.