Backend Engineer

About the Role

We're looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to own entire systems and lead technical initiatives. You'll design and build backend services that power Aplazo's financial products, mentor engineers, and drive quality across your squad.

At this level, you're the technical leader of your squad—breaking down ambiguous problems, delivering complex features end-to-end, and making the trade-offs that balance speed with reliability.

  

What You'll Do

• Own systems end-to-end — Design, build, and operate backend services from idea to production

• Lead technically — Run design reviews, set technical direction, and make architecture decisions for your squad

• Mentor engineers — Help E1/E2 engineers grow through pairing, code review, and coaching

• Drive quality — Champion testing strategy, observability, and engineering best practices

• Leverage AI strategically — Use AI for architecture exploration, large refactors, and risk modeling; build or champion AI-powered tools for the squad

• Handle incidents — Lead incident response and blameless postmortems in your domain

• Ship predictably — Break down ambiguous problems into clear milestones and deliver on commitments

  

What We're Looking For

Technical

• 5+ years building backend systems at scale

• Strong experience with Java (Python/Go a plus)

• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, APIs, and cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred)

• Expert-level debugging across service boundaries

• Track record of designing systems that balance scalability, reliability, and speed

AI Fluency

• Uses AI tools (Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) daily for coding, debugging, and analysis

• Uses AI strategically for architecture exploration, large refactors, and prototyping

• Builds or champions squad-level AI-powered tools (e.g., smart alerting, test generation)