Lead Backend Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Lead Backend Engineer

• Work model: Fully remote

• Assignment type: Contract

• Focus: Backend engineering, big data, and technical leadership

Description

Lead backend engineering for a cloud platform that helps financial analysts monitor U.S. market integrity. You’ll design and deliver distributed microservices and big data solutions on AWS while serving as a technical authority and mentor for the team. You’ll also champion responsible adoption of AI-assisted coding tools across the full SDLC.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of solutions using distributed microservices and big data technologies on AWS (Hive, Presto, Spark, Hadoop)

• Act as the technical authority for big data performance—diagnose bottlenecks and guide resolution of complex, system-level issues at scale

• Own end-to-end project delivery and proactively remove engineering impediments (technical, process, or cross-team)

• Translate business requirements into clear technical road maps and actionable engineering work

• Mentor engineers through code reviews, constructive feedback, and enforcement of engineering best practices

• Partner with product, architecture, QA, and DevOps to deliver scalable solutions

• Champion adoption of AI tools (e.g., Kiro) throughout the full SDLC with a standard of responsible use (do not merge what you cannot explain)

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership

• 5+ years with Hadoop, Spark, or Presto (internals, performance tuning, optimization)

• Proven experience with AWS EMR (Hive/Presto), ECS, Lambda, and S3 at scale

• 3+ years in Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, or SQL; 2+ years building REST/web services

• Proven record leading end-to-end project delivery and resolving team impediments

• Experience mentoring engineers and elevating team-wide engineering standards

• Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, CloudFormation) and scripting (Unix Shell or Python)

• Hands-on experience with LLM-based coding tools (Kiro, GitHub Copilot, or similar) across the full SDLC, with ability to lead responsible AI-assisted development

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Benefits

• Fully remote contract assignment