Software Development Engineer III - Backend Development
First seen by Alion on Sep 29, 2026.
Role Overview :
As an SDE3 Backend Engineer, you will take technical ownership of complex backend components, ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability of our systems. You will serve as a go-to engineer for challenging problems, mentor junior developers, and play an active role in shaping system architecture and technical direction.
Responsibilities :
- Design and Development : Architect and implement scalable backend services and APIs using Python or Golang, ensuring high performance, resilience, and extensibility.
- System Ownership : Take end-to-end ownership of critical modules, from design and development to deployment and support.
- Technical Leadership : Conduct design and code reviews, enforce best practices, and mentor junior engineers to raise the team's technical bar.
- Collaboration : Work closely with product managers, architects, and other engineers to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
- Performance and Reliability : Troubleshoot complex issues in production systems, identify root causes, and design sustainable long-term solutions.
- Innovation : Evaluate new technologies, contribute to proof-of-concepts, and recommend tools that can improve developer productivity.
- Process Improvement : Drive initiatives to improve coding standards, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing practices.
- Knowledge Sharing : Document designs, create technical guides, and share insights with the broader engineering team.
Requirements :
- 2 - 8 years of backend development experience with Python or Golang.
- Strong expertise in designing, developing, and scaling microservices and distributed systems.
- Solid understanding of concurrency, multi-threading, and performance optimization.
- Proficiency with databases (SQL/NoSQL), caching systems (Redis, Memcached), and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.).
- Hands-on experience with Linux development, Docker, and Kubernetes.
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) and related services.
- Strong debugging, profiling, and optimization skills for production-grade systems.
- Experience with AI-powered development tools is a strong plus; familiarity with concepts like 'agentic coding' for workflow automation or 'context engineering' for leveraging LLMs in system design is highly desirable.
Required Skills :
- Strong problem-solving ability, with experience handling complex technical challenges.
- Ability to lead technical initiatives and mentor junior engineers.
- Excellent communication skills to collaborate with cross-functional teams and articulate trade-offs.
- Self-motivated, proactive, and able to operate independently while aligning with team goals.
- Passionate about engineering culture, quality, and developer productivity.
Skills
Python, Golang, Distributed Systems, Redis, Kafka, Microservices Architecture, Backend Architecture, AWS, System Design